A window into the believable fantastic

Rating: 10/10 (30 March 2019)

Night's genius is he always makes these hooks about nothing; of characters afraid of wind or there's probably aliens up in the clouds. Most ingenious in Village, characters afraid of scary stories. But none quite capture you through the cinematic texture, as here. I kept thinking 'dimension' as this felt like a straight on window into the believable fantastic.
On craft. Like a doctor, it hints with questions until it's diagnosed. Enormous risks of faith in pace and edit. It's conceived in images and motions. The two long takes with Glass and Dunn in the stadium, then one captures the football action for just a moment before pulling back. And what I call writing with the camera. The slow zoom on Glass's eye: 'They called me Mr Glass' and fade, which would make no sense on the page. You want those vignettes where the actors go, 'Why are we doing this?' 'Just trust me, this will be amazing.' And there is the best moment.
It's conceived via staging as his wheelchair shenanigans. Conceived via metaphor, reflective, camera dancing with mirrors, and the television.
I like the funny moment of how Glass didn't even bother to stick around for the football game, just turned straight around. Sam Jackson just evokes this eerie alien like nothing he's ever done but he is so heartbreaking and touching.
Night was naive then; beginners luck and market newness, so Disney was testing a new voice and told him, change nothing, let's see where the experiment leads (and years later this risk paid off steering the culture and comic canon in hundreds of little ways; it can be argued Unbreakable via its butterfly effect is the highest grossing film of all time, and why the art house experiments bring a necessary capitalist offshoot of the corporate monstrosities).
Experience means it's there but you don't offer precious real estate of your running time to tease your idea, therefore Hollywood efficiency would straighten him from artistic leaps of faith. Still whatever this film promised was not delivered in its two companion pieces. I'm not sure what this was, and Night via his current day output surely must be perplexed himself, as a business man, even a little eye-rolling he did it all in such a beautiful artistic fashion--as he learned painfully across the years that audiences don't care about craft, they care about the hook and thrills.