gets better with each viewing

Rating: 9/10 (6 September 2008)

David Dunn takes the train home from a job interview in New York. He rests his head against the window, looking tired and sad. A little girl stares at him through the seats in front. A hot woman sits down next to David, he slips off his wedding ring, and gives her some chat. But he comes on too strong, she feels uncomfortable, and she changes seat. David goes back to leaning against the window, encountering the reproachful stare of the little girl. This momentary failure of his moral compass is about to be surpassed by cataclysmic events.
Unbreakable surprised and entertained me the first time I saw it. I am discovering it rewards you with repeat viewings. That opening scene is charged with sadness and regret and sets up so much of what we will discover about David's family life and a deeper inner turmoil he feels. It contrasts with another scene of family and children later in the film, after David has decided to embrace the gift he has. Sitting at the breakfast table, reunited emotionally once more with his wife, he shows his son a newspaper story, and silently mouths 'you were right' and 'don't tell Mum'. The son is vindicated, the father redeemed, and their tears are imbued with joy and yet restraint, as Mum is cooking two feet away and can never know.
These quietly powerful moments reveal Shyamalan's powerful instincts as both writer and director. Scorsese said directors are 'managers of emotions,' Shyamalan's Unbreakable is a fine example of what that means. In the rescue scene, look at how the fact that the mother is dead is revealed. Look at how Dunn is rescued by the children he has just freed. From putting down the phone to Elijah, who tells him what he should do, through the rescue and breakfast reunion with his family, not a word of dialogue is spoken. That is a sign of a filmmaker with unerring instincts.
Of course, 'unerring' is ironic in light of Shyamalan more recent outings. Signs, for example, takes the same constituent elements as Unbreakable and the end result is risible. But Unbreakable is a fine film that gets great performances from Willis and Jackson, two actors who tend to be only as good as the directors collaborating with them. Dunn's journey from self-denial twice over (after the car accident and then when initially faced with Elijah's question), through discovery, to full flowering and then horror at the manipulation he has fallen prey to, is subtly and movingly portrayed beat by beat by Willis.
And the surprise ending, when you first encounter it, is breath-taking. On repeat viewing, you appreciate more the exhausting emotional changes Dunn has come through up to that moment right before they shake hands. The handshake becomes a thing of tragic beauty. Dunn's sadness, so long carried and at such cost, is cruelly thrust once more upon him.
Shyamalan, since Lady in the Water, has been almost reduced to a figure of fun. It is a great pity - viewing Unbreakable makes you hope that he can recover form and produce more work of this calibre.