Film review: Sixth Sense

M Night Shyamalan, 2000
Certificate 15, video on general release
Rating: 4/4

"See... to perceive by the sense seated in the eye; to perceive mentally; to apprehend; to recognise; to understand; to learn."¹

This film is about reparation: what happens when one man gets to retrace his steps, to see his errors, and to correct or atone for something he has previously missed. It shows what transpires when an item of his clinical work comes to affect the course of his whole life. It also bears on an old distinction: that there may be acts of omission as well as of commission; that what we fail to do may be as significant as purposely doing wrong.

Bruce Willis plays Dr Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist - and a man whose life seems to have come together, only for it to unravel in a most unusual way. As a result, he comes to meet Cole Sear (played by Haley Joel Osment), a young boy constantly terrified by his experiences. Cole sees dead people, some of whom do not know they are dead. Labelled as a "freak" at school, Cole is exposed through this "sixth sense" to a direct experience of the calamitous events that have occurred in the buildings he inhabits. His unpopularity with classmates is the least of his worries.

What Dr Crowe gradually comes to see is that he has made assumptions that may have affected others adversely. He has been blind. Now he must come to the truth about himself, and he must "make good" by saving Cole.

The acting in this film is superbly executed and, indeed, to appreciate its subtleties fully, a second viewing is mandatory (hence the advantage of video). Each scene involving psychologist and patient is perfectly choreographed. The silences are as significant as the words; omission equals commission again.

Ironically, it is Crowe who manifests the stranger neuropsychology: apparently oriented in the present, he can recall the past but, fugue-like, his episodes of attempted therapy with the boy emerge as islands of subtle revelation. It is Cole Sear who sees the reality of their situation. In the language of the film, it is Sear who is the seer.

Sean A Spence, senior lecturer in psychiatry,, University of Sheffield
Email: s.a.spence@sheffield.ac.uk


studentBMJ 2000;08:217-258 July ISSN 0966-6494

1. Chambers concise dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers, 1997.