Good points, I’d forgotten about those.
Thinking about it, ISTM the premise breaks down at this depth, and there’s no obvious fridge logic to save it. It implies that had Crowe managed to reach the bill before his wife, she would have seen it slide across the table and lift up. And in fact, why couldn’t he catch the ring?
Not that that bothers me; of course the premise is going to break down if you think about it long enough.
Cole’s mother is also frustrated by the way a piece of jewelry (IIRC a “bumblebee pin”) keeps going missing, and at the end of the movie Cole tells her that his grandmother’s ghost keeps getting it because she likes it so much. The ghost girl also pushes the box with the incriminating video out from under her bed.
I can’t remember the specifics of what objects we see Malcolm interact with in the movie, but since ghosts can only be seen and speak with people with “the sixth sense” maybe the presence of someone like Cole also gives them greater ability to interact with the physical world. Cole isn’t around when Malcolm listens to the tape of his past client, but it was because of Cole that he wanted to hear it and the boy on the tape also had the sixth sense so maybe that’s close enough.
A similar explanation would be that ghosts have some limited ability to interact with the physical world but can’t do this when people who don’t possess the sixth sense are present. So maybe Malcolm could play the tape because he was alone, but wouldn’t have been able to do so if his wife had been in the room. When the cabinet doors in Cole’s kitchen mysteriously open it happens when Cole’s mother has stepped out of the room, not while she’s there to witness it.
For the exception that proves the rule, remember that Malcolm looks through a window and sees his coldly-going-her-own-way-these-days wife getting friendly with that guy who’s clearly interested in her, which of course prompts the glaring one to whip a rock at the glass before storming off in a huff.
His experience was my experience. I went and saw it on opening day with a girl knowing nothing about it other than she wanted to see it. I had no idea that you were supposed to think that Bruce Willis survived the shooting. I didn’t realize it was intended to be a twist ending until my date to the movie started talking to me about it after. It was weird, I watched a ghost movie, she watched a thriller with a crazy twist.
Yep. I shouldn’t have said no amount of fridge logic. Because of course it’s possible to explain anything if we allow ourselves to arbitrarily add IF…ELSE clauses.
In this case we need another couple of clauses to account for The Other Waldo Pepper’s observation.
I believe you, and I don’t mean to criticize, but I don’t quite see the reasoning of getting the twist before even the hospital scene.
We see a shooting. It’s a serious shooting, but people can survive such things. Next thing we see Crowe out and about, and then he talks to a boy. At this stage we know nothing special about the boy.
Surely the explanations: 1. He survived the shooting or 2. This is a flashback to an earlier time, before the shooting, would come before 3. He’s dead, but he can still be seen by at least one living person, and he’s not aware he’s dead.
?
No. 2 is ruled out by “The Next Fall.” I’d count that as the first misdirection. In another movie we’d see Mrs. Crowe coping with her loss or moving on with life without Malcolm.
I’ve decided that the locked door with the red handle is not so much misdirection but a clue. Why should it ever be locked? And it happens twice in the movie.
Yes. And how does Malcolm the ghost completely miss out on being a witness to that process? Very convenient indeed. I guess “they only see what they want to see” can get pushed pretty far.
One of the DVD extras is a featurette called “Rules and Clues” where Shyamalan explains the visual (and in some cases auditory) clues regarding the spirit interactions (such as the color red, etc.). It’s interesting to see how much care was taken to imbed those little hints without completely giving the whole thing away. That was one of the reasons I wanted to watch the movie again immediately after watching the extras. And yes, Shyamalan also comments about the hospital scene — he was very concerned that conversation would give away the ending (and apparently did for some people). For what it’s worth, it’s very clear from the commentary and extras that M. Night Shyamalan’s intention was for the audience to believe Crowe was alive throughout the movie.
As for the spirits’ ability to interact with the material world, I’d always thought they usually could not, but could channel their energy to do so on occasions of extreme emotion, which is a typical ghost trope, cf Ghost (1990).
It’s possible that I knew more about the movie that I remember knowing, this was years ago at this point and my memory of events may have shifted a bit. Also I did simplify a bit. I assumed he was dead, then thought…oh wait what, and then when he started not actually interacting with people just decided that I had missed the explanation that he was a ghost because I was…distracted. It was a date, I wasn’t 100% focused on the movie.
Ghosts are psychic entities, hence the rules governing them could reasonably be expected to take peoples’ mental states into account. (I’d speculate ghosts are actually composed of other peoples’ mental states, but we don’t need that for the present fanwank.) Keeping this in mind, we can say that there’s a rule that ghost can’t interact with the physical realm in a way that would make it clear to live observers that a force of some kind is at work.
Missing bee pins, happening behind one’s back, explicable as a kid’s trick or simple absent-mindedness is one thing. A check sliding across a table, or a ring suspended in the air, are different, mentally speaking. And since ghosts are psychic (i.e. mental) beings, mental difference understandably make a difference.
There I did it.
He’s a psychiatrist; that’s where he keeps his written notes about patients, his recordings from therapy sessions, you name it. Why wouldn’t he keep all of that behind a locked door? You never know who’ll drop by.
Of course, things going missing, and then having a 6 year old give a (seemingly) ridiculous explanation for it, is just another example of why the kid would need a therapist.
And as to the mother ignoring Willis, I could well imagine that if he had been seeing therapists, with no result - she would be pretty pissed with therapists and have a pretty low opinion of them by that stage (which was how I read the scene)
I must be missing something pretty basic because I don’t get the point of the locked door, other than as a symbol of being shut out from the truth.
When we first see Crowe after the shooting, he has a file folder with information about Cole. Where did he get the file? From the basement, right? (And later, we see him in the basement looking up the meaning of a Latin phrase.)
He says to Cole: “I was supposed to meet you today. Sorry I missed our appointment.”
Why does Crowe think that he has an appointment with Cole today?
Then he says: “Do you mind if I sit down? I have this injury from a couple of years ago and it flares up every once in a while just so I won’t forget it.”
Why does a ghost have pain from an injury? And from “a couple of years ago”??
Then he says: “I got an award once. From the Mayor. It was a long time ago. I’ve kind of been retired for a while. You’re my very first client back.”
So Crowe realizes that a long time has passed but he still doesn’t realize that he’s dead. What do ghosts do when they are not being viewed by a movie audience? 
I doubt that they eat, drink, urinate, defecate, or sleep. But apparently Crowe is fine with not having to do any of those things. He doesn’t seem puzzled with his situation, until the very end. Or does he know all along? Doesn’t seem like it.
Crowe has a doctorate in psychology, he has won a prestigious award for his work, but he can’t even figure out that he’s dead. Everyone that he interacts with ignores him, except for Cole who, though quite screwed up, is a child who lays out the rules for interacting with ghosts, and has the special power to see “The Truth”.
Is Shyamalan mocking psychologists? (Both of his parents were “real” doctors.)
Okay, I have a lot of questions. I’ve seen the movie only once (when it first came out), and, though I’ve researched it a bit online, I’m still hazy on some of the details. Any simple answers?
The simple answer is he’s a ghost. In most ghost stories the ghosts are not just regular folks who happen to be dead, they’re limited in their ability to interact with the physical world, communicate with the living, and to perceive/understand things that have happened since their deaths. In The Sixth Sense we’re explicitly told that ghosts do not know they’re dead and “see what they want to see”.
So?
I read a fanwank suggesting that Cole had, in fact, been referred to him – y’know, right before Crowe died. And so Crowe would of course have all the preliminary notes he’d written out before meeting the kid – upon reviewing whatever documents he’d been faxed or whatever – and would’ve jotted down something like “Appointment this Friday at Noon.”
I just rewatched the scene; that’s not what he says. (I just googled the script, and he says that stuff – but it apparently didn’t make it into the movie.)
Thanks. I thought that the movie was somehow inconsistent with the some of the info online but I wasn’t sure. Also, I’ve come across a convoluted explanation of the locked door that seems fine, given the movie’s premise, so I’m fine with it.
Okay.
So here’s the recipe:
Start with an old, irrational concept that is based on ignorance.
Add some arbitrary rules that make the concept even less rational.
Applaud the writer/director for tricking us with the new, irrational concept.
That is simple. :rolleyes:
The dinner scene to me was just her being mad and refusing to talk or even look at him. She’d waited so long that the check came as he arrived, very late. She was angry. So that didn’t do it for me.
It was when he watched her sleeping and she dropped his wedding on the floor and he realized he wasn’t wearing it. Then it got cold in the room.
So yeah, I was late to the party.
Maybe ghost movies aren’t suited for such an exalted intelligence as yours? :rolleyes:
If you insist that your fiction must be 100% “rational” (meaning what fits your worldview), I’m not sure how well fiction (or interacting with live humans, for that matter) works out for you.
Yeah it had me right until the end, just like Fight Club, and I got a real buzz out of the both of them.
The Others spoiler I guessed they were dead way early; I think the movie should’ve been held back at least a year.
I didn’t realize the twist until the end, but I had spotted several things that seemed odd or inconsistent.
The problem is that I’m so used to sloppy, half-assed movie-making that I no longer pay any real attention to the kinds of things used as clues in the movie. I just file it away under “things the actor/director/editor/etc screwed up on.” Part of it is that I have a little experience behind the scenes with movies. I’ve seen indie film-makers struggle to edit a scene together when they forgot to get good transition shots, or when they piece a conversation together from multiple retakes.
The dinner scene in particular seemed like something that had been unintentionally messed up. Even on re-watching the movie and knowing that it was intentionally done a certain way as a clue, I still tend to assume that it was screwed up through bad acting and/or bad editing.