The Sixth Sense (1999)

            ‘The Sixth Sense’ is 1999 supernatural film directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The film starring Bruce Willis as a child psychologist, Dr. Malcolm Crowe and Haley Joel Osment acted as a troubled, isolated boy Cole Sear who has the ability to see and talk to the dead. The story starts with Dr. Malcolm Crowe being shot in the torso by his former Schizophrenic patient Vincent Grey, for not helping him get over with his hallucinations issues ten years ago. Feeling guilty from his failure with Vincent’s case, now Dr. Malcolm dedicated most of his time and energy working on another patient Cole Sear, whose case was similar with Vincent. At the same time, his relationship with his wife Anna Crowe became less intimate and they hardly talk to each other. During one session, after Cole tells his secret to Dr. Malcolm that he has the ability to see the astral bodies (ghosts), who are unaware that they are already dead, Dr. Malcolm thinks he is delusional and considers dropping him. But after obtaining the evidence from Vincent’s sessions old audiotape, he learns that Vincent also possess the same ability and understand Cole was telling the truth all the time. How Dr. Malcolm does helps Cole to overcome his problem at the end forms the rest of the story.

            While watching the film, I notice the parenting style of Lynn Sear towards Cole Sear is ‘Authoritative parenting’. According to Santrock (2013), authoritative parenting style mainly results when there is high parental responsiveness and high parental demands. For example as we see in the film, Lynn gives Cole the chance to confess anything regarding her bumblebee pendant which belongs to her deceased mother, telling him she found it in his drawer. When Cole states he didn’t took it, thinking he was telling a lie, Lynn strictly ask him to leave the dining table and go to his room. While on the way to his room, he saw an astral body of the previous house owner’s son. Being feared and sweeting, he approached his mother to stay together with her for that night, she agreed and hugs him and notice he has been shaking and scared. This illustrates her love towards him. And there is one particular scene, where Lynn notices there are few signs of physical abuse on Cole’s body. She thought it was done by Cole’s peers at school and she immediately called their parents and ask them to keep their children’s hands away from Cole. There is another scene at end of film, when Cole reveals his secrets about his gift to his mother. Initially, he thought that his mom will think he is some kind of freaks but Lynn clearly states that she will never think his son as such and she eventually realizes her son telling the truth and embrace him.

The film also illustrated the Fear appeal theory. According to Maddux and Rogers (1983), Fear appeal is a kind of strategy by motivating people to take a particular action by arousing their fear. As we see in the film, Cole was very frightened by seeing those astral beings moving around same like other living beings. The reason for them to come near Cole is because Cole can see and hear them and they wanted him to help them fulfill their desire so they can find to light to enter spiritual world. Some of these astral beings were actually physically abuse Cole which causes him to become phobia all the time. In order to avoid fear, Cole started to help those spirits as suggested by Dr. Malcolm. The first ghost he helps was the little girl called Kyra Collins who just recently died. He travelled with Dr. Malcolm to her funeral reception and gives a videotape to her father. Then everyone watches the video which contains the shocking evidence that Kyra’s mother had been slowly killed her by adding cleaning fluid in her food. By doing so Cole has rescued Kyra’s younger sister from being the next victim. Thus, Kyle’s soul became peace and enters the other dimension.
 

As I’m watching this movie for first time, I really didn’t expect there will be the twist at the ending which reveals that Dr. Malcolm is also a ghost and he had been died on the day Vincent Grey shot him. So all this while he was unaware that he had been died and only had been seen and heard by Cole. The screenplay was brilliantly written by M. Night Shyamalan to allow the audiences to feel touched at the end. I personally loved watching this film and would give rating 8 out of 10 for this film.

References:

Maddux, J. E. & Rogers, R. W. (1983). Protection motivation and self-efficacy: A revised theory

of fear appeals and attitude change. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19 (5), 469-479. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(83)90023-9

Santrock, J.W. (2013). Life Span Development (14th Ed). McGraw- Hill: NY

Forget Paris (1995)

            ‘Forget Paris’ is a 1995 romantic comedy film directed by Billy Crystal, who himself acted as the main character Mickey Gordon in the film. The film was co-star by actress Debra Winger as Ellen Andrews. The screenplay was written in third person’s point of view, where Mickey’s friends narrated the story of Mickey’s marriage life throughout the film. Mickey is a basketball referee and fall in love with Ellen, an airline employee while he was in Paris for just one week. Mickey starts to develop romantic interest towards Ellen when she helps him found his father’s casket which was lost in the same airlines she works. While Ellen, being separate with her first husband, develop romantic interest towards Mickey as he makes Ellen laugh and forget about her problems. Both of them gets married after discover that each have been fall deeply in love with each other until to the point where it starts to affects their career. After the honeymoon phase of their marriage, things didn’t go as expected and relationships conflicts start to emerge in their marriage life. Whether they did solve all the conflicts from their relationships and whether or not they manage to be together with each other until the end forms the rest of the story.

            Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love (1986) can be applied to study the relationship between Mickey and Ellen. Initially, both of them started their relationship with only having intimacy to each other without considering getting into commitments, the fact that Mickey is only came to Paris to full-fill his father’s last wish and will return back to America very soon. So it was just one week they spend time together and it is not possible to know in details about each other in that short period of time. When Mickey became angry during a game session and gets suspension for a week, it shows that he misses Ellen and develops passion towards her. And Ellen’s decision to resigns her airlines job, officially divorce her first husband and flies over from Paris to America in order to stay together with Mickey illustrate her strong romantic attraction towards Mickey (intimacy with passion). Commitment came into picture when both of them get married. The moment they start companionate love with increasing intimacy, the passion towards each other starts to fall down. This is due to Mickey’s constant away from home for his referee sessions and Ellen have to be alone all the time with doing a job that she dislike. Even Mickey found a way to resolve this by taking off a year from referee job and wanted to spend time with Ellen, things happens unexpectedly where Ellen gets promotion and spend most of the time in workplace while Mickey have to take care of his sick father-in-law all by himself. However, commitment is the key fact that holds both of them together until the end of the film.

Adams’s Equity theory (1969) can be used to explain the conflict that occurs in relationship between Mickey and Ellen. Equity theory explores that couples will be most happy with their relationship if the distribution of resources is fair to both relational partners (Hatfield, 2009). In the film,
Ellen left her job in Paris and come over America to stay with Mickey while doing a job that she not interested. But, Mickey doesn’t want to give up his referee professions to anyone including his newly waded wife. He was always away from the house and only spends few days together with Ellen in a month. This created a problem as Ellen have to be alone in house, go shopping alone, go working alone and there is nobody for her to share her feelings. She didn’t quite her job at Paris to come her to be alone. This causes conflict in their marriage life as Ellen perceive Mickey was not equity enough as he didn’t willing to sacrifice as equal as Ellen. Even though Mickey took one year leave of absence from being referee, but he did went back to that job later because he really enjoy doing it and it was his identity. And in another scene, Ellen asked Mickey to together move to Dallas because of her new promotion. But, Mickey do not want move outside from California because he states it was his home and place where he belongs to. This makes Ellen to feels short-changed or under-benefited because she left Paris for him but he doesn’t want to leave California for her. This causes a temporary separation for both of them where Ellen went back to Paris.

             Though out the film I notice that this is not usual film which ends with ‘Happily Ever After’ story but it was realistic enough to point out what are the possibilities, when and how a marriage relationship might get into trouble and how to work out to solve the issue. The film portrays that falling in love was not feeling but it was a decision we took ourselves. Love is action, not emotion. It was Ellen’s action to quit her job in Paris and flies over America to stay with Mickey. Her action is the one causes the life to change for both of them. She might choose to stay in Paris alone in the first place but her action of love made Mickey’s life to be changed as well. This film is an eye-opener for me because it did portrays that keeping high expectation in a relationship will eventually causes more disappointments towards both parties involved if things happens not to our expectations. We always tend to put a lot of expectation for our partner but we forget that other partner also have his/her desires to follow. The title “Forget Paris”, emphasis meaning for both Mickey and Ellen that whatever happy moments happened in Paris, never expect it to happen again because life always change in unexpected way. I really like this movie even though its comedy didn’t make me laugh but it did deliver a massage and awareness about relationship towards the ending. I would give rating 7 out of 10 for this movie.
 

References:
 

Hatfield, E. (2009). Equity Theory. United States of America: Sage Publications, Inc.

 
Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological review, 93(2), 119.