My 40 Favorite Films of the 90's - 11 - The Sixth Sense (1999)

The Sixth Sense (1999; Hollywood Pictures)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Writer: M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette

I just do not get Shyamalan.  He had a great start.  Wide Awake was corny and sort of Hallmark-Channel-Original-ly, but it had a childlike outlook on ideas of religion, skepticism and mortality that was simultaneously tragic and charming.  After Wide Awake (which wasn’t his first film project, but still…), he created what rates high on most film fans’ list of the greatest films of the 90’s.  The Sixth Sense was an astounding accomplishment in filmmaking.  Forgetting the “trademark” Shyamalan Twist for a moment it was just a great film all around.  Osment left a huge impression on the audience here, with a performance so good that the audience’s fear reflected his own.  To add to that he was entirely sympathetic.  For many years, the tale of the child with supernatural connections has been handled with the kid either being enigmatic or creepy, or was simply sage like and wiser than just about any other character.  In a few cases, they were also “okay” with the presence of the supernatural, never understanding what the big deal is.  Cole (Osment) is terrified of just about everything, and it shows.  It permeates every scene.  He is always pensive entering a room, always looks down to avoid seeing anything scary, and almost never makes eye contact.  It’s subtle characterization you rarely see in modern movies.

The very simple story revolves around a child psychologist named Malcom Crowe (Willis) troubled by a case that went horribly wrong who meets his new patient Cole Sear.  Everything seems to be falling apart in Crowe’s life.  His wife is distant and nobody seems to care that he’s there, nobody except Cole, that is, who suffers from the baleful ability to see ghosts.  There is a strange connection between the two characters that is sudden and, at first, inexplicable.  As the story moves along, Cole is helped by Crowe to overcome his fear and begins to find meaning in what he once considered his curse.

There aren’t many movies like The Sixth Sense, at least not anything of quality released after 1980.  It is a straightforward story with few characters told well through great performances.  It has no villain, no pointless subplots, no focus on any characters except the two leads and their interactions with those around them and no freaking comic relief.  We have a story that reveals itself quickly but steadily, with almost no exposition, with all emotions conveyed through the actor’s faces.  There are actually scenes with little to no dialogue at all, where we just experience the world as Cole does.  It’s truly astonishing how well this tale is told.

So what happened?  Shyamalan has shown a steady decline in quality over the last decade and a half.  The subtlety and sincerity of The Sixth Sense is all but gone, with actors forcing emotion, over-or-underacting or being just plain silly.  It’s the curse of the great filmmaker, really.  If you release your Magnum Opus too soon, you will never be able to make another “good movie” again because all of the other films you release will be compared to the one that made your career.

My 40 Favorite Films of the 90's - 24 - Misery (1990)

Misery (1990; Castle Rock Entertainment)

Director: Rob Reiner

Writers: Stephen King (Novel), William Goldman

Starring: James Caan, Kathy Bates

Rob Reiner used to direct good movies.  He does not do that anymore, and has had a rather bad track record since the mid 90’s, really starting with the dreadful bane of my existence that is North.  That said, during the 80’s and early 90’s he had a good run, and Misery is one of his best directorial works, lagging just behind the powerful A Few Good Men, the charming When Harry Met Sally and the fan-favorite fantasy The Princess Bride.  Reiner has a knack for visual style and Misery has a really cool idea behind it, focusing the camera mainly in a series of wide shots of a single room, putting the audience in the shoes of a man who is royally screwed, although, at least he is not the poor guy from Audition.

Misery follows the story of an author named Paul Sheldon.  After being injured in a car accident, Sheldon is nursed back to health by a woman named Annie who turns out to be a crazed fan.  Under her care, Sheldon is stuck in his present state, with nobody knowing where he is, and thus begins to finish the last novel of his beloved series in a bed in her cabin.  However, when Annie discovers his intent to kill off her favorite character, her already present insanity turns into utter rage, with events that build and tension that has a steady climb over the course of the film.

Misery is freaking terrifying.  It is not the lazy sort of horror with things jumping out at you shouting “BOO!”  No, this is a story where you are meant to empathize with Sheldon as an artist and a victim.  He cannot leave, he cannot fight her, he is almost entirely helpless through most of the film, and Annie knows it.  She has complete control over him, and as events play out, her attempts to keep him there to “fix” the story become more and more desperate, and violent, and a feeling of dread slowly fills the air over the course of the film.  It is a helpless situation that is elevated thanks to two very excellent performances from two superb talents.  Reiner’s direction goes a long way as well, with wide angle shots that appear as Sheldon’s perspective of the room, which has this strange effect of seeming smaller and smaller as the film goes on, and the low angle shots of Annie, stiffly towering over the severely injured man give a sense of intimidation very early in the movie, really before Annie even does anything all that crazy.  This is a creepy story executed flawlessly thanks to three talents in their prime.

My 40 Favorite Films of the 90's - 29 - Trainspotting (1996)

Trainspotting (1996; Channel Four Films)

Director: Danny Boyle

Writers: John Hodge

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle

My number 29 is the film that was voted by the UK public as the greatest Scottish film of all time, Trainspotting.  An examination of the lives of a group of twenty-somethings living in poverty in late-80’s Edinburgh and their constant struggle with heroin addiction, Danny Boyle’s award-winning film is a smart and occasionally horrifying melodrama.  This is easily one of my favorite films based on the theme of drugs and drug abuse as it has one of the best tonal shifts of any film I’ve ever seen.

The film primarily centers on Renton (McGregor), who narrates the film and expresses his thoughts on shooting up and coming down, as well as his inner-struggle about getting clean.  The film starts off with a funny series of narrations that run down why he and his friends do the things they do.  Unlike many other characters we see in movies, Renton is represented as loving heroin.  We hear from him the details of the high and the way it is narrated it seems almost as though the film is trying to sell the drug to its audience.  However, about halfway through the film the events take a dark turn and things get more than a little out of control.

Trainspotting is funny, but also very, very dark.  There is violence, tragedy and consequence, however the film never feels preachy.  Danny Boyle shows us some of Renton’s hallucinations that come in escapism, but also come in the form of terrifying torment as his family executes a harsh plan to force Renton to clean up, keeping him in a room as he is left to go cold turkey, a truly painful and awful experience.  As Renton writhes, sweats and screams, we see it and feel it with him thanks to Boyle’s masterful use of camera work and his flawless execution one of the most horrific scenes in film history.  I will not ruin it, though, as Trainspotting is a must-see.

Danny Boyle went on to direct the awesome 28 Days Later and was shortly-thereafter acknowledged by the Academy for his film Slumdog Millionaire.  Trainspotting is a film that looks very good, while also being occasionally unwatchable.  It is graphic, gruesome and disturbing but is never gratuitous.  Every scene has meaning to the plot, as Renton and his friends struggle with moving on from their addictions, but the drugs always seem to win.  It is tragic and smart.  It is neither a pro-drug comedy or an anti-drug propaganda film.  Instead Boyle just shows us these characters’ respective realities, as grim as they may be.

My 40 Favorite Films of the 90's - 40 - Audition (1999)

Audition: 1999; Basara Pictures

Director: Takashi Miike

Writer: Daisuke Tengan

Starring: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina

Kicking off this list of my 40 favorite movies from the 90's is one of the hardest sits of my life.  I watched Audition shortly after its release and was disturbed, disgusted, shocked and yet I loved every minute of it.  I will not hold back in saying that Audition is easily one of the most disturbing films ever made as director Takashi Miike is a master of sensory filmmaking and with films like Gozu and the Happiness of the Katakuris he blends different visual and tonal ideas, all having a certain visceral feel to them.  Audition is built upon a very simple, yet structural, use of tension and as it grows and grows the events in the movie become even more disturbing, revealing one of the most hard-to-watch final acts of any film I have ever seen.  

The plot follows a widower named Shigeru (Ishibashi) who is convinced by his brother to hold a fake audition for musicians, with the true intention being to find a new wife for the lonely man.  The one perfect girl, Asami (Shiina), seems so beautiful and so sweet to Shigeru and we get the same impressions of her from the start.  However, this expectation is promptly crushed as the film progresses and, at the start of the 2nd act, we finally get a glimpse into just how disturbed she really is.  The conclusion of this film is a prolonged, slow and quiet torture scene, where we can hear and even feel the acupuncture needles going behind the eyes and the piano-wire sawing Shigeru's feet off.  It is all done in graphic detail and with a shocking level of intimacy, especially in the sound production, which is some of the best in the horror genre.  Every sinew, every severed vein, ever prick and prod is heard over a deafening silence, otherwise only broken by a heavily-drugged and nearly-paralyzed Shigeru’s stifled cries of pain and Asami’s gleeful yet eerily-soft singing.

Now, despite its disturbing premise and final scenes, Audition is a beautiful film.  It is all very soft and delicate, with lots of close shots and lingering scenes that do not feel dragged out, instead they all add to the boiling pot.  There are a few scenes in particular that are framed just beautifully.  Long shots down a dark hallway lit in the foreground by a soft blue fluorescent light, and beautifully-framed scenes of silhouette and interior scenery that are surprisingly not boring.  Miike is very good at visual tone, and he uses the cold, sterile fluorescent lights of Shigeru's life to contrast with the warmer golden of Asami’s.  It is meant, I believe, to be a siren’s song for the audience, as though she can bring warmth and color to his world again.  We know in the end, however that this will not happen.