BSA 206 W10 : Scene Breakdown

I'm breaking down the Unbreakable opening scene:

Opens on text and ambience, text is about comics - so something directly related to the film's plot.



Before Fading in from black, we hear a baby crying.

We are joined by more ambient noise, people moving, old timey music - a department store in 1961 (as the title suggests), it's a shot on a doorway into a room, a lot of people are gathered outside.



This already builds a sense of mystery as we wonder what the event is all about.

As the people enter we realize our perspective was looking at a mirror outside the doorway.



The woman who enters first introduces a man named mister Matthison, she says he's a doctor.

As the camera pans, we realize we were looking at a second mirror the whole time, and that the shot is constructed very differently than we initially understood it to be.



The entire dialogue exchange between the doctor and mother are played out in one shot, even when he talks to the other people in the room, the shot remains unbroken.

When he asks the big line of the scene "did you drop him" the camera moves laterally for the first time since the scene started, helping emphasize the line and finally breaking away from the mirror or any reflections.



The camera keeps moving to the right, even when the doctor is looking at the other characters in the mirror we now see them as they really are, not represented through a reflection.



The camera moves quickly back to the mirror as the mother rises, for a moment lingering on the scene of the doctor and bystanders, possibly to give the audience a view into the mother's mind.



It turns back to the doctor, where he delivers the next big line and finally rests on the crying mother as we fade to black once again.

All the while the musical score is rising, enter into the opening credits.



We open on a shot of the protagonist, sitting in a train staring out the window, he if reflected in it.



He moves away and through a gap in the seats sees a young girl upside down, he cranes his neck to see her right side up. After a moment of observation he moves back to his original position, we see a wedding band on his finger.




A young woman's voice asks if he's alone, he says 'yeah' and she puts her baggage in the above head compartment, she is wearing a short cut shirt with her mid drift showing. The camera moves laterally again to show that the main character is looking directly at this before quickly looking down again.



He takes off his wedding ring.


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The most interesting thing for me at this point is the perspective that the movie chooses to take, in that it seems to be somewhere between omniscient and Point of View. At points it puts us in the character's shoes, but Shyamalan's style seems to be very much about what is and what isn't told to the audience.

The use of the seats in the train for example, it hides a lot and only gives us the right information when we are required to know it - the wedding ring tells us that Dunn is married, he knows this the entire scene but we are only made aware just before the lady joins him.

This translates to the larger picture of Shyamalan's work as well, where he likes using twist endings that reveals something new about the plot that we were before unaware of.

The shot with the little girl is interesting because it's from Dunn's perspective, but then we also have to wonder whether or not the whole scene playing out isn't from hers. Perspective is a very obvious theme in this scene, with the presence of reflections and Dunn craning his head to try and see the world as the little girl does.

As a director Shyamalan is all about what the audience is allowed to see and how they experience the film, fitting that this opening scene has that represented in spades.