REVIEW: ‘Glass’ is blurred at first, but may sharpen with time
Samuel L. Jackson, James McAvoy, and Bruce Willis star in Glass, directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
Midway through M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass, a character talks about expert illusionists. She argues that the real skill these people possess is how they analyze hundreds of minute details about their audiences; they then synthesize the information into performances that seem like real, supernatural magic. Her point is that there’s no such thing as people with the abilities of comic book heroes and villains. Anyone who believes otherwise is mentally ill, and it’s her job to treat them.
What’s important about this sequence is how it informs the rest of the movie. It’s not hard to see the film’s writer-director as the same kind of performer his character describes: concocting scenarios, laying out information, and inserting red herrings in dogged service of a big finale. Shyamalan’s career has, rightly or wrongly, been devoted to his twist endings, and it’s up to the viewer to decide whether the twists are worth sitting through the movies that precede them. Do we feel amazed (Unbreakable, The Sixth Sense) or cheated (The Happening)?
The context, in the case of Glass, is that we’re dealing with the third film in a trilogy that began with 2000’s Unbreakable, a series defined by its low-key, grounded depictions of people with special abilities. As we pick up the story, David Dunn (Bruce Willis), Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) and a split personality called The Horde (James McAvoy) have all been locked up in a mental health facility by Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson). Staple’s alleged aim is to convince all three that they are merely delusional, and not super-powered at all. But of course, this sets up an attempt by Price to prove just the opposite, no matter how many people get hurt or killed along the way.
Sarah Paulson as Dr. Ellie Staple.
Unbreakable and its sequel, Split, are narratively effective because they don’t explicitly discuss the nature of the characters’ abilities. We’re left to conclude certain things for ourselves, alongside the protagonists, which deepens our emotional connection to them. But in Glass, Shyamalan decides to take a mile-high view. He devotes many scenes to Staple expositing about her theories at length. And it isn’t long before Dunn and The Horde believe her, and Shyamalan shows none of the mental turmoil they might be experiencing. These storytelling decisions left me rather cold, especially in scenes between Staple and characters like Dunn’s son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark) or The Horde’s victim Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy).
However, while these parts of the movie don’t really work, Shyamalan’s ultimate goal is to make the audience doubt the truth of the characters’ abilities. In a climactic scene outside the facility, Shyamalan uses extreme wide shots, fish-eye close-ups, and clumsy staging to strip a fight between Dunn and The Horde of the thrilling, Marvel-style grandeur we might expect from the subject matter. Instead, the confrontation feels sad and mundane, like two disturbed patients brawling on the lawn. It’s a messy experience, and I wasn’t sure what I thought about it at first. But it feels like the kind of approach that can improve with repeated viewings, even if it doesn’t fit with the needlessly wordy exchanges in earlier scenes.
Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) returns, following the events of Split.
I won’t talk about the twist - which you know is a guaranteed component in a Shyamalan film – other than to say that it won’t work for everyone. Arguably, you could say there are two twists, one which turns the film on its head, and another that tries to soothe some of the feelings brought on by the first reversal. Once again, the perennial question that surrounds this filmmaker’s work applies: does the ending feel earned? Or does it feel like Shyamalan wrote the ending first, and then shrewdly filled in the gaps in the narrative without taking his characters into account? If you can’t already tell, I’m maddeningly on the fence.
Considering that Shyamalan proved to be a surprise world-builder with the twist in Split, it’s hard to know what the future holds for him. If people connect with the film, it may open the door to all sorts of spinoffs. But the movie may just as easily inspire the same frustration and ridicule that resulted in Shyamalan’s last fall from grace. But I think there may still be a bit of magic left in his act, even if some of the tricks are wearing thin.
Glass gets two and a half stars out of four.
Stray thoughts
Shyamalan’s cameo goes on way, way too long.
I’m still unconvinced by the film’s justification for Casey going to visit The Horde and try to help them.
There were moments where I thought the movie was going to riff on The Truman Show, and it might have actually worked!