DVD Review
The Sixth Sense starring Bruce Willis, Toni Collette, Olivia
Williams, and Haley Joel Osment as Cole. (This DVD includes many special
features including a contribution from James NEWTON HOWARD who composed
the score.)
HOLLYWOOD Pictures Home
Video Z1 34646 [103
mins]
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"I see dead people. They don’t know they’re dead. They only see
what they want to see…
Do you ever feel the prickly things in the back of your neck? That’s
them!"
Inspired, intelligent, imaginative, thought-provoking, The Sixth Sense
is all of these and is deserving of its huge box office success. All its
elements come together perfectly. All the actors turn in brilliant performances:
Bruce Willis proving he can deliver a deeply sensitive performance, as well
as balding brawn, in his role of child psychiatrist Malcolm Crowe; Toni Collette
outstanding as Cole’s long-suffering mother, and brilliant in her final
roadside accident scene with her little son, when she learns the truth about
Cole’s apparitions and is reassured of her mother’s love; Olivia
Williams in the difficult role of Malcolm’s wife; and, especially, the
young Haley Joel Osment as the haunted 8 year-old child Cole – a truly
astonishing tour-de-force from one so young.
This DVD is rich in absorbing extra features. In comparison, the majority
of DVD programme fillers are so much clatter and dross. But these are meaningful
and intelligent. Story boards and their final film realisations are shown.
Also included are scenes that had to be deleted for the sake of pacing and
coherence but seen after the film, help to enrich the viewing experience;
the director’s philosophy is explained, cast details and theatre and
TV trailers included. But perhaps the most meaningful feature as far
as devotees of film music are concerned is the contribution of composer James
Newton Howard. He has called the film a "religious experience". He
shares the feelings of so many who have observed that this film is about
the universal themes of loss, and living with and learning to cope with grief
as well as the eternal question of what happens to our souls, as Newton Howard
puts it, "when we leave this planet."
The film’s producers wanted Newton Howard’s music to have the ability
to make us "feel the other world". In his contribution the composer says
that there was a lot of discussion about what The Sixth Sense was about,
what it meant and what were the various dimensions and levels, and experiences
of The Sixth Sense -- its frightening side and its beneficent aspect. "The
positive aspect is of course what transforms all these people in the end.
The emotional responses of how it impacts on other people, especially the
kid’s life and specifically his mother. There was a lot of stuff to
contend with and a lot of information was imparted to me in the most imaginative
and intelligent way by the writer/director, M. Knight Shyamalan." For instance,
he told James to imagine he was in a room with an invisible animal and that
he did not know where it was but that it could pounce at any moment."
His feature proceeds to demonstrate how Newton Howard scored two of the scariest
scenes from the film: the early scene in which the deranged Vincent, a former
patient of Malcolm’s breaks into the psychiatrist’s home and shoots
him; and the scene in the bedroom of the poisoned girl where her ghost pushes
the box containing the videotaped incriminating evidence towards a startled
Cole. In another impressive segment, Newton Howard tells how he composed
the music that underscored the scene in which Cole confesses his secret to
Malcolm with the words quoted at the head of this review. He relates how
a chorus of many, many voices was recorded at very low levels so that the
listener is only aware of a slight hum but that is suggestive of thousands
of anguished souls.
A truly outstanding release that can be seen over and over to appreciate
all its treasures It should be in every film and film music student’s
enthusiast’s collection.
Reviewer
Ian Lace
