The Sixth Sense  -  Close Encounters of the Sixth Kind

Close Encounters
Of The Sixth Kind
By Debra McCampbell, KidActors

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE SIXTH KIND (Or how our next Spielberg made his own great personal spiritual opus.) Do you remember being 10 years old? Steven Spielberg did when he gave us two of the greatest odysseys of childhood mystery and discovery the cinema has ever seen. I was 13, in 1977, when I first saw his CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. My friends and family will tell you I've never been the same since. In 1982, I was validated once again by our brightest young American filmmaker when he graced our screens and stole out hearts with E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL. Let me just tell you that I recently traveled from Atlanta to San Antonio to attended the 36th Annual National UFO Conference.

Spielberg has often spoken of those two films as being his most deeply personal. It's no accident that they revolve around the journeys of children. Much can certainly be made of how some of our best, most self-revealing work comes from our connection to children or at least to the child within each of us. So I'm not terribly surprised that such a wise, searching writer as M. Night Shyamalan has made a career of exploring issues of boyhood and meaning and loss. That he does it so brilliantly at the tender age of 28 is both refreshing, encouraging. That's about the same age Spielberg was when he was at the first pinnacle of his career. Coincidence?

You know what I really like about Shyamalan? His almost total lack of cynicism. It's wonderful to imagine that there might be a cinematic new dawning on the horizon of this new millennium, that filmmakers can still tell stories without leaning on stomach-churning visual gimmicks or sickening gore and violence. Many people have accused THE SIXTH SENSE of being Disney-ized in both its subtlety and its desire to be uplifting. I beg to differ! It's not Disney-ized! It is, in fact, more Spielbergian than any horror film I've ever seen. The emotional payoffs are earned and appreciated, not forced. And the tone never wavers once it's set at the beginning of the film. Being able to achieve that is a gift, a talent, a craft rarely attained by any creator of a live action Disney film. Shyamalan knew he had a great story to tell and by God, he told it! Steven should be proud that his cinematic legacy has been so honored.

BUT - is it a horror film? Yes. As much as PSYCHO, THE CHANGELING or ROSEMARY'S BABY can be called such. Like those films, THE SIXTH SENSE works your last nerve right down to a shocking twist of an ending. But, unlike those films, it dares to try something bold. It dares an ending that's downright soulful and so emotionally satisfying you want to relive the experience right away --- just to savor the ride on which it has taken you. For most of us that was not only a first this summer. It was a first in years! I've even heard a few folks say it was the first time ever that they wanted to run around the corner and jump right back on the celluloid coaster.

The last time I was so moved by a film was in 1997 when I saw (Spielberg protégé) Bob Zemeckis' CONTACT. Given my appreciation for the film's subject matter and its star, Jodie Foster, it was almost a given that I'd like it. I never imagined that I'd see it three times with three different friends over the first three days of release and have one of the best conversations of my life about it! I read the book and wore out the soundtrack. At final tally, I had seen the film 6 times in the theatre. I own 2 different video versions --- one widescreen, one reformatted. I wondered how anyone, let alone the artists who made that film, could ever top it. Did THE SIXTH SENSE top it?

Well, I don't know... Possibly. Here's why: I believe that all films and all performances can be narrowed down to moments. Magical, haunting moments that stay with you long after the actual viewing experience. Think of your favorite film. Think of the moments you recall. How many are there? How long did you have to wait to get to them? How satisfying were they, really? Do they hold up in your mind's eye each time you visit the memory? I recently had a written discussion of some of my favorite moments from THE SIXTH SENSE with my screenwriting mentor. I was stunned to find that the first time we wrote about the film, we talked about 30 different moments. That is significantly more moments than I can cite in almost any movie I've ever loved. I'll number them here only to separate them. I can still call any of the moments in this film immediately to mind. In fact I can't imagine the day when I won't be able to access the memories. The day will come, to be sure. It always does. But I know I'll treasure revisiting these moments from time to time for the rest of my days.

THE MOMENTS: (in chronological order)

1) Little Cole Sear emerges from his apartment, puts on huge eyeglasses and disappears right before troubled child psychologist, Malcolm Crowe's eyes.

2) "IT'S CALLED LATIN" You knew something was up with the kid from this very line, didn't you? This tiny boy in his father's big old glasses seems is just barely brave enough to peek over the Church pews at the doctor who only wants to help him. He speaks barely above a whisper and there's a great wariness in his voice. That first conversation with Malcolm is just riveting.

3) STICKY FINGERS! Cole swiping the statue as he leaves the Church is misconstrued at first. Everyone laughs, perhaps thinking the kid's troubles must extend to kleptomania. But that uneasy laugh rings hollow in your ears later when you see why Cole wanted the statue.

4) IS SHE PULLING HIS HAIR, OR FLICKING HIS EARLOBES? When Cole enters the kitchen at the beckoning of his loving, overworked single mom, something is with him. His brow is tight, his eyes downcast. Anything to avoid Mama's gaze, and her questions.

5) SWEATY PALM PRINTS FADE and we know the truth. When Mama leaves the room, Cole tightens even more, his nerve-rattled palms wet the Formica tabletop as he holds in The terror of what the interloper does next.

6) COLE BOLTS from his home but finds being with Tommy no better. If it isn't the restless dead tormenting him, it's the brainless living.

7) MALCOLM TALKS TO COLE'S MAMA, NOT! It's deft but obvious. Still you don't see it on first viewing. Malcolm and Lynn sit silently, anticipating Cole's return home. You can tell something is off from the moment Cole enters the door and sees Malcolm right there in front of his Mama. He stares at Malcolm "sideways" as she welcomes him home with a made-up fairy-tale of a day and encourages him to do the same, we get our first glimpse of what the regular little boy inside Cole Sear might be like. It's deeply sad that his wistful account of a perfect day is more like a normal boyhood afternoon that a fantasy.

8) THE MIND-READING GAME. If you haven't guessed by now, I'm of the school of thought that Cole knew. Watch closely here. Cole is trapped, yet again, by one of them. But Malcolm gives him a possible "out" with the game. He can only play along if he wishes to escape. Despite his palpable desire to flee, his face also betrays intrigue at Malcolm's accurate assertions and defeat at the wrong ones. By the time the game is over, something has shifted. But Cole is wounded again as he says, "...you're nice but you can't help me."

9) "YOU SAID THE 'S' WORD." Thankfully Malcolm hasn't given up. And maybe, just maybe, Cole knows he's not completely alone. "Do you ever talk to your mom about the way things are?" "...I don't want her to know." "Know what?" "That I'm a freak." Malcolm urges him never to believe that about himself. You can see how desperately Cole want to believe he's sincere.

10) "STUTTERING STANLEY!" I wondered, was Cole channeling? Or was he just repeating what someone nearby was telling him. The burned teacher, maybe? Poor kid. He was only speaking the truth. How perfectly rendered was his reaction to being told "Shut up you freak!" by Stanley Cunningham?

11) "I DON'T WANNA TALK ABOUT ANYTHING RIGHT NOW". On October 30, 1999, the audience I sat with laughed knowingly at this line. Hmmm… Wonder if some of them had seen this movie before… Malcolm makes one of his sweetly inept attempts to cheer Cole up. "You like magic?" Cringe! Cole closes his eyes and tries to wish Malcolm into the cornfield.

12) "I DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE FUNNY." This from a boy who cannot laugh.

13) "He doesn't get invited places." Wretched birthday parties are a tradition in movies about troubled kids. This agonizing, lyrical, pivotal nightmare of alienation and persecution takes the cake. Cole sits on a darkened staircase, hiding out. He wilts as he hears his mother describe how he isolates himself. A red balloon drifts up the stairwell and he's intrigued.

14) Nothing like a great uninhibited screamer to make your skin crawl in a horror film. When the punks lock Cole in that dumbwaiter and we know something awful is happening to him, we can't stop squirming in our seats till his Mama pulls him out of there.

15) "I SEE DEAD PEOPLE". If all you heard in this scene was that celebrated line, you missed a lot. Much has been written about Cole's revelation but no one goes deep enough. The scene leaves us breathless. We're very worried about Cole by now. Malcolm waltzes in to comfort him and he's again touched by Cole's longing for his father as he notes that in addition to wearing his lenseless glasses, and his broken watch (and eventually his gloves), Cole wears his big black socks. Cole clearly has no intention of talking, to anyone. But he's very alone and hurt and scared. Malcolm has no clue how to even begin. He clumsily attempts a bedtime story. Cole calls him out on it, "Dr. Crowe, you haven't told bedtime stories before." Malcolm acknowledges his ineptitude and for a moment, you think they may have a normal conversation. But then Cole presses him about why he's so sad. There is an incredibly powerful but very subtle moment there when Malcolm says that he has met "this wonderful boy." Watch Cole's face brighten ever so slightly. "This really cool little boy." Still brighter, almost happy. When Cole asks, "How does the story end?", the desperation in his eyes tears at your soul. Malcolm surrenders, at the end of his rope, "I don't know." Finally, the money shot --- Cole drags every ounce of his courage together and speaks the truth of who he is for the very first time in his young life. How incredibly hard would that be? The scene is played so intimately and carefully that it literally, physically pulls you right into it as you wait for those four iconic words.

16) ONE BREATH. You know, I can't get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night anymore without turning on the lights? Boy, did our first encounter with one of Cole's ghosts play out scary. Why? Because there was any real threat to his life? From the ghost of a battered suicidal housewife? No. Because there were great special effects? Aside from the make-up, the lighting, the crying baby, and that breath? No. It's because we experience Cole's fear right along with him. When he sits in his tent sanctuary shining his flashlight on his pilfered religious statues, crying and assuring himself, "It's okay. I'm okay," he's screaming on the inside. And so am I.

17) "PLEASE MAKE THEM LEAVE". It begins, "Did you think the play sucked bigtime?" What? "Tommy Tomasimmo acted in a cough syrup commercial. He said everyone was self-conscious and unrealistic. He said the play sucked big-time." Cole being Cole. For about half a minute there, we follow him into thinking things are getting better. Damn Hanging Ghosts! I loved the look on Cole's face when Malcolm stops to find him frozen in his tracks and asks him what's wrong. It's a moment in which a look speaks volumes. Kinda like, Oh God, not now. What follows, is another of the more memorable lines in the film, "You ever feel the prickly things on the back of your neck?" But I've never understood Cole's instruction to Malcolm, "Be real still." What was that about?

18) The way Lynne makes a sweetly silly effort to get Cole to smile, just for a second, by pushing him in a grocery cart really-really fast is just heart-ripping. You see why he adores his Mama. Little stuff like that is all that's keeping the kid sane.

19) The bumble bee pendant. Cole is agitated from the get-go. He can't get a moment's peace anywhere. Tommy Tomasimmo's on TV again. The house is freezing. Something's afoot. And again, his Mama confronts him about the regular disappearance of his grandmother's pendant. He didn't take it. He knows who did. But he cannot tell his mother. He certainly wants to but he's more afraid of losing his mother's love (like he lost his father's) than he is of any punishment she might bestow upon him. He can only tell her honestly that he did not take it (while also timidly suggesting that someone else did) and hope that she believes him. As his mother speaks of her pain that he will not confide in her, he reels. We see him cover his pained face with both hands, looking like he's stifling an inner scream, only to finally utter again that, "no" he did not take the pendant. How perfectly is this scene echoed in Cole's final appearance onscreen?

20) "MAMA, IF YOU'RE NOT VERY MAD…" Lynn's anger stuns Cole as much as it stuns us. But we know she loves him. "Look at my face. I'm not very mad." And he scares her as much as he scares us. "Cole, why are you shaking?"

21) "SOME MAGIC'S REAL". Malcolm's desire to restore his wounded marriage forces him to pull away from Cole. Cole cannot handle the idea. He begs Malcolm not to abandon him. To at least acknowledge his belief in the secret. Malcolm honestly cannot and he also cannot lie to the boy. "How can you help me if you don't believe me?" Cole pleads. My heart is broken, right alongside his.

22) "YOU WIGGIN' OUT?" Gotta be my favorite line in the whole movie! And it's the give-away, if you think about it. Malcolm listens to the tape of Vincent and his ghost and realizes that Cole is telling the truth. He rushes look for Cole and finds him in the Church, regressed to his old behavior of interacting with toy soldiers. What ensues is a scene that just holds onto me and shakes me like a mad dog. Cole asks, "You been running around?" Malcolm nods. "Make you feel better?" Only stunned, silent awe. "I like to run around, it's good exercise." I can't really get a handle on what Cole says next but it's something like, "You want to be a Lance Corporal in Company A, Third Battalion, Marine Corp? Were stationed in the Quy Nong Province…" Know what? It isn't in the script. Who wrote that? More importantly, once again I wondered is Cole channeling? Or is he that smart?

23) "What do you think these ghosts want when they talk to you?" Malcolm asks. Watch as that question staggers Cole back into a pew. He's astonished that someone is finally talking to him as if what he sees is real and actually means something. But he's still angry at Malcolm's abandonment and reluctant to accept that he might now understand the truth. In fact, Malcolm seems to understand it more than him. Hmmm... Make you wonder? I love Cole demanding of Malcolm, "How do you know for sure?" A question the doctor cannot yet answer.

24) "YOU SLEEP NOW MAMA." Cole comforting his Mama as she tosses in a sleep made fitful by her worry over him is such a poignant moment that the following scene is all the more invasive and horrifying.

25) "DO YOU WANNA TELL ME SOMETHING?" Jeeeeeeez… Cole is fighting back bile along with his fear as he tries to speak with the ghost of the little girl. And we're right there with him. Very human reaction.

26) MUNCHAUSEN SYNDROME BY PROXY. As you watch Cole try to help the murdered girl explain to her father, understand that while he may not know those words, he knows exactly what Kyra's mother did to her and how.

27) "YOU LIKED IT, SHE SAID." Cole is so compassionate with Kyra's baby sister.

28) Cole gets picked first for kickball and hits a grand slam! Well, not quite. But he does get lifted up on everyone's shoulders and carried around cheering. Of course, I'm talking about the King Arthur play. It's a mini-movie in itself. Bobby, the curly-haired little boy, gets to be Merlin, Tommy Tomasimmo is relegated to village idiot and Cole gets to play the stable boy so pure of heart that he is the only one who can pull mighty Excalibur from the stone! What could be cooler than that? That he looks to Malcolm for strength when he's center stage is so sweet. And when Cole and his cast mates fall to the stage and dissolve into giggles, and Malcolm laughs heartily, we feel the first real joy we've been allowed in the whole movie!

29) PINOCCHIO BECOMES A REAL BOY! In the school corridor, as he plays with the Excalibur prop from the play, we finally see the Cole that just might get to be now that Malcolm has helped him figure out how to deal with his calling. He finally knows that he's okay. He's a regular boy. What he sees and what he knows he must do does not make him a freak that no one will love.

30) "I'M READY TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOU NOW." Cole and his Mama in their car, stuck in traffic. A woman has died in an accident up ahead. He's trapped again. It's high time he tells his mother his secrets. This is one of those classic scenes that could evoke emotion completely out-of-context and with almost no previous knowledge of the characters. But, if you've been paying attention, you really care for the characters by now and the scene will play a tune on your heartstrings that you may never have heard before. I can't bring myself to quote it here. It must be experienced. I will say that whoever decided on the delivery of Cole's line, "...asked her a question?" as a question is a damn genius!

Shyamalan did so much that was so right in the making of this film, from its inception on. He says he wrote the script after a premonition that he would do so and that it would star Bruce Willis. The story goes that the script sold in just 6 hours. Many were dubious about the casting of Willis. Others argue that his commitment to the picture got it greenlighted. Whatever the case, the phenomenal success of THE SIXTH SENSE is certainly owed to Night Shyamalan's vision. And his choices. He could've made a jacked-up FX movie with CGI ghosts floating around and popping out all over. Instead, we see dead people. Walking around like regular people. Except that they bear the wounds that caused their deaths. And we don't see them until Cole admits that he sees them. Those choices are masterstrokes because they force us to see the dead through Cole's eyes and interpret them through Malcolm's quest, if you'll indulge me for a minute. We watch Cole's ghosts become increasingly terrifying in their pursuit of him until Malcolm realizes that Vincent, Cole and their haunting spirits just want help, "even the scary ones." The more Cole opens up to his visitors and tries to understand them, the less terrified he is by what they ask of him. Malcolm has helped him. Really just by believing him. Mission accomplished. They can both move on.

The light and the music swell. The stunned, teary-eye crowd claps and the murmurs of awe begin to circulate. Little circles of people gather in the hallways, the bathrooms, the lobbies, the sidewalks to talk about what they've just seen. People have heated conversations in their cars. Perhaps even in cafes or diners. In my office, co-workers came to me for weeks, asking me about this film everyone knew I loved. I posted reviews and box office scores on the bulletin board in our breakroom. We were all quite surprised by the film's record-setting five- week-straight run of more than $20 million in ticket sales. But everyone I know agrees that it couldn't have happened to a nicer movie.

I've watched THE SIXTH SENSE from a different angle, a different perspective, each time I've seen it. I've been careful to select a different theatre and a different type of crowd each time. Conversely, it has been a different experience each time. And yet the end result has been the same --- delighted awe. Who would ever expect such tenderness and real emotional resonance from a ghost story? The surprise twist will no doubt draw people to the film for a long time. But it's our connection to those characters, to that boy, that account for what will most certainly become a classic on video and DVD.

Finally, it is of monumental importance to note Night's most fortuitous choice of all --- the casting of Haley Joel Osment as Cole. All of the best, most memorable moments in the movie occur when Osment becomes completely transparent as an actor. We see only Cole Sear. Everyone's work here is uniformly terrific, but Osment does something remarkable. As he moves through Cole's odyssey, he peels away layer after layer of our expectation and reveals a completely unique yet utterly familiar human spirit. When Cole knows that his work with Malcolm is complete and he asks if they can pretend they're going to see each other tomorrow, "Just for pretend," that delicate, almost embarrassed little smile on his face is so welcome and so radiant it's blinding. You can suddenly imagine a better life for Cole. And you want that. You want him to be happy. He's gotten under your skin, made you care. You may find that you cannot shake this character and that you don't want to. There's actually something very comforting in the idea of a boy like Cole Sear. After all, wouldn't most of us like to think that if we were ever to become one of those tragic souls who somehow gets lost in the journey, someone would be there to help us along.?

If you've seen this film and you love it, read the script. I can't believe it hasn't been released in trade paperback. It is nothing short of amazing. It fills in all the blanks. And yet you still love the film just as it is. So nearly perfect, so endlessly intriguing.

You can buy a photocopy of it here: http://www.key-west-online.com/movie_scripts/order.html