Unbreakable (2000)
Now all I need is your credit card number.
THE SUMMARY: A man miraculously survives a catastrophic train derailment, meets a disabled man with a rare condition of frailty, and it turns out the cripple orchestrated the whole thing because M. Night Shyamalan twist. At first I thought this movie’s ‘secret hero’ stuff was a little silly, but it has kept me thinking throughout the week, and in my criteria, that makes it a good one. Not all heroes are obvious or invincible, and we should all strive to be the hero for who matters most: our families.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER JACOB: A slow burn where a normal, blue collar guy comes to terms with his supernatural powers, resulting in one of the best super hero movies ever made.
JAMIE AND JEANNE’S AI FACESWAP ART:
Who…
…wore it better?
Fake and ghey - I wouldn’t even try that out of curiosity.
I hope my sons turn out more handsome.
And they will certainly have better muzzle discipline.
Blonde having an open mind? Keep hoping.
Rules are rules.
THE BEST:
Not every man can be a hero, but every husband and father can: Unbreakable is defined by the everyday hero, the idea that anybody could be one, even unknowingly. ‘Not all heroes wear capes,’ the saying goes - some are just regular guys placed in unique circumstances. Of course that’s not to say that everybody can be a hero to everybody - to make hero status universal would be to erase the term. But Unbreakable places the true heroism where it properly belongs: a hero to family.
Despite his superpowers and his capacity for saving people, David’s true achievement is revealing his powers to his son. It’s a beautiful scene in which few words are actually exchanged and just whispered: a father’s proudest moment is through his son, and his son is brought to tears in admiration of his dad.
The point? Don’t strive to be a hero for everybody. It’s generally not possible. Be a hero for your family. And that starts by building one.
You don’t know your limits unless you test them: Even though I have some conceptual questions about this plot point as I’ll discuss below, the broad theme is true: unless you test your limits, you will never know them, and thus will never know your true power and capability. Can you bench 300+? Likely not, but you don’t know if you haven’t tried. Everyone has a range of talents and strengths, and unless we are actively searching for them, they can remain totally unknown, even to ourselves.
Push you limits. Once you find them, respect them, of course, but always find new ways to challenge yourself, even in small ways. Each challenge will bring you closer to the best possible version of yourself.
It’s scary not to know why you’re here: There’s a great scene toward the end of the movie when Elijah talks about the terror of nihilism, or existential uncertainty, or, more plainly, just not knowing what the point of your life is. He asks David ‘do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world. To not know why you’re here. That’s just an awful feeling.’
He’s right, but to entertain the idea that your life is purposeless is only as scary as it is wrong: completely. Human life has inherent value, for its own sake, and the reason it’s so uncomfortable to think otherwise is because it’s false. There’s a reason you are here, and it’s your job to fulfill it.
Fear is absolutely a choice: Likewise, in the same way it’s a choice to view your life as purposeless, it’s also a choice to live afraid. Elijah’s mom has a great ‘tough love’ speech for him when he says he won’t go outside to play anymore because he fears injury. She says ‘you make this decision now, to be afraid, and you won’t never turn back. Your whole life, you will always be afraid.’ She continues that God has a plan for Elijah, and his fear won’t change that plan anyhow.
It’s easier said than done in a terrifying scenario, of course, but we do all have the capability of overcoming our fears. Each day we live in fear is a choice not to confront it, or not to do what we can to change it. Can the scariest things even kill us? Yes, of course, but to trust in God’s purpose for you is to understand that even death itself is not to be feared. There are lives worse lived than those cut short serving something noble. Those lives include those long lived in fear and cowardice.
It’s a decent, though obligatory twist: It’s M. Night Shyamalan, so you know the ending is going to be something you didn’t see coming, which paradoxically means you see it coming. In this case, Elijah is actually a terrorist who has been orchestrating these mass death events to find the special ‘unbreakable’ person that is David. In fairness, this was one of Shyamalan’s earlier movies, so his reputation for twist endings was less thoroughly established at the time. And even though I knew a twist of some kind was coming, I actually did not predict that Elijah was some scheming mass murderer. I guess I should have picked up on the credit card scam jokes.
Heroism to your son counts first.
Until you try... how do you know?
When you know the twist is coming, it's less twisted.
THE WORST:
David really didn’t know this about himself until he was middle-aged?: While watching the movie, I thought the premise was a little silly - David is a middle-aged guy who only now has suddenly realized he has super powers, and has had them his whole life?
And maybe that is silly, but the more I thought about it, the more that seeming absurdity is the point (so this is actually some kind of hybrid ‘best’ and ‘worst’ point, hence me not knowing exactly where to place it).
Yes, it’s weird that this guy has inhuman strength and durability, plus some kind of mind-reading power and supposedly didn’t know it, but, to the prior point, we all have unrealized talent and potential that even we ourselves don’t know about because we’ve never tested ourselves to achieve it.
And, even if we do know of this special strength or talent, sometimes we deny it or explain it away, for fear of the responsibility it assigns to us or the attention it brings from others. For example, if you actually had a super-human ability to stop criminals, it means you may have something of an obligation to fight crime, because you’re the best guy to do it. Even if it’s dangerous, or even if you hate doing it for any number of reasons - if you have a talent for it, people expect you to do it, and often they’re right.
Point is, yes, it’s surface-level silly that David has super powers and doesn’t even know, but there’s real truth to it: we all have talent we don’t fully realize, and often we don’t want to share it with others even when we do.
I get it - mirror and reflection symbolism: The mirror or reflection bit got old to me: Elijah’s birth is seen through a mirror, Elijah’s conversation with his mom is seen through a TV screen, Elijah is portrayed as a reflection when he puts his invitation on David’s car, etc. I gather there’s some supposedly profound symbolism here. Mirrors symbolize introspection, which is how both David and Elijah find their strength. The glass can also symbolize fragility, which of course is Elijah’s defining trait.
Whatever - just show me the scenes filmed normally. The reflection thing is just visually distracting. And the movie has plenty of good dialogue and themes anyway. Mirrors and reflections don’t enhance what the movie otherwise does very well. They just make it annoying.
I get it - reflection symbolism.
THE RATING: 4/5 Wickies. Watching it, I thought it was more in three territory, but thinking about it more later proved its value to me. It’s a different take on the superhero genre with the right values in mind.
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NEXT WEEK: Click (2006)
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