I believe during the production of the Sixth Sense the director was barely in his mid 20s... kinda young and inexperienced to be directing this type of film... the Sixth Sense was not only about ghosts, it also dealt with Dr. Crowe's marriage... as well as Cole's family life, etc... and there are some scenes that have always felt kinda cliche or artificial to me.
I truly believe that a good director depends as much of his technical-filmmaking experience as he does from his own life experiences... and maybe Shyamalan should have waited a little more in his life before he directed this particular project... he still did a great job... but it would have been even better if he had been a bit more mature.
Think of a writer/director who is 25 years old... writing about love, death, divorce, raising kids, etc... but he hasn't gone through any of this personally... it could be done, but I think it would be difficult and could easily come across as cliche and fake to the viewer, simply because he doesn't know what he's talking about.
The same could be for example a 60 year old writer/director (who was a teenager 45 years ago), doing a contemporary project about high school kids in their mid-late teens... kids don't talk the same way as they did 45 years ago, they have different interests, technology, etc... it would come across as extremely fake too.
Again there are EXCEPTIONS to this, but it's easier for someone like Francis Ford Coppola to direct The Godfather than it would have been for example for... John Woo or Pedro Almodovar.
If a writer/director hasn't lived through what he's producing... he has to do a lot more research.
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Stratego (31052)
2 years ago
"and there are some scenes that have always felt kinda cliche or artificial to me"
I adore this movie, but I actually feel the same way about a few particular moments. Watching Shyamalan's later films, though, I don't think it has a lot to do with age. At times, he seems to have a disconnect from this world and human emotions like a Tommy Wiseau. I do wonder if he may be on the spectrum.
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acidraindrop (3055)
2 years ago
Yeah, that awkwardness seems to be consistent across all his work. Is it a disconnect? Is it a style (like what Yorgos Lanthimos does)?
But I don't think it's due to experiential naivete per se.
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Sidha108 (2733)
2 years ago
Yeah, the depiction of marriage seems artificial like it’s someone in their mid 20s making what they believe a married couple in their 30s/40s would be like. I also feel like the private school aspect is trying to speak to parents in their 30s who have kids in private schools.
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