From despair to hope, from fear to redemption: religious transformation in The Sixth Sense.

The Sixth Sense met with astounding box office success after its release in August 1999. It grossed $27 million in its first weekend, reached the $70 million mark in ten days, and has joined the top-grossing films of all time, bringing in more than $600 million to date.

Its popular success mirrored its critical success, as it garnered six Oscar nominations in 2000, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Haley Joel Osment) and Best Supporting Actress (Toni Collette). Screenplay writer and director M. Night Shyamalan says that he was thrilled to learn that the movie's two strongest audiences were young boys and older women, who generally don't go to see the same movies. (1)

Shyamalan was born in India and grew up within an Indian family in the Indian community in Philadelphia. In an interview, he commented on the inherent spirituality of his Indian-American roots and how that spirituality has influenced his filmmaking:

I get asked the question a lot about whether the Indian culture--the
Indian-American mix--influenced the filmmaking. It had never occurred to
me. It's not like you sit outside yourself and say, "you know, this is
really unusual." But perhaps the fact that the body is not the end of
your life, that the spirit continues, is something that I just accept,
because of all of these Indian ceremonies about spirits or ghosts in the
house, protecting the house from spirits. It's just an accepted thing
over there, so it was something I just accepted as common, but I guess
it's not. So in that respect all of my scripts, I think, have a certain
spirituality that is fairly unusual for a young guy in Philly playing
ball, eating Big Macs, to have. (2)

The spirituality of the Indian community was not Shyamalan's only childhood religious experience. He also attended a Roman Catholic school for ten years, where his faith and attitude toward spirituality were doubtless influenced.

The Sixth Sense is a profoundly religious movie. Even on the surface, the religious themes seem to jump out and demand notice: the question of life after death, our interaction with the supernatural, the possession and use of a "sixth sense." When we dig a little deeper, our analytical spade turns up themes such as Cole's desperate search for protection and sanctuary in religious places and Malcolm's quests: on the ethical side, the righting of an old wrong; on the religious side, a desperate search for forgiveness. We will encounter the deep religious roots of this film: Cole's and Malcolm's relationships to others and to each other, their common journey from despair to faith, from fear to redemption. This journey will enlighten for us aspects of our Christian understanding of Jesus' incarnation and the forgiveness of sins.

Character and relationship analyses

Malcolm and Cole. It would be nearly impossible to characterize the main figures in The Sixth Sense without mentioning the ways in which they relate to each other and to the other characters in the move. Isolation and relatedness are major themes, defining the heartbreaks and hopes of the protagonists. It is Malcolm's and Cole's isolation that fuels their initial desperation and their eventual connection with each other and with their loved ones. The characters' actions take place within the frame of their relationships with each other and are nurtured and formed within those relationships.

Christianity is relational. Its beliefs are based on a trinitarian God, which means continual community within the Godhead. This fundamental communal identity extends to the church community as well. An empty church building is not "church"; rather, church is the community of believers who gather in such a building. It is the relatedness of the people to one another that creates church; it is the relatedness of God within Godself that creates, redeems, and sustains the world. An examination of the characters of Malcolm Crowe and Cole Seer shows the absolute importance of relationships to their spiritual well-being.

Dr. Malcolm Crowe, formerly a beloved husband and a very good doctor, becomes a person defined through broken relationships and an almost complete lack of relatedness. In the film he seeks to remedy two strained and deteriorating relationships: his relationship with his estranged wife, which seems to be drifting into nothingness, and the relationship with his own self-esteem and professional identity that was shattered when Vincent Gray, a troubled former patient, shot him. Malcolm finds strength to pursue his formerly healthy relationships despite being isolated by loneliness, hounded by self-doubt, and crippled by depression. The doctor has now turned victim, the formerly confident and carefree husband is reduced to watching from the window as his wife comes increasingly closer to another man.

Malcolm and his clients. Malcolm's personal and professional story is told most eloquently by Malcolm himself, in response to Cole's request to "tell me the story about why you're sad":

Once upon a time there was this person named Malcolm. He worked with
children. He loved it. He loved it more than anything else. And then one
night he found out that he made a mistake with one of them. He couldn't
help that one. And he can't stop thinking about it; he can't forget.
Ever since then, things have been different. He's not the same person
that he used to be, and his wife doesn't like the person that he's
become. They barely speak anymore; they're like strangers. And then one
day Malcolm meets this wonderful little boy, a really cool little boy,
who reminds him a lot of the other one. And Malcolm decides to try and
help this new boy, 'cause he feels that, if he could help this new boy,
it would be like helping that other one, too.

This monologue reveals not only the pain of Malcolm's fractured relationships but also his hopes for becoming whole again. If he can succeed in helping Cole, Malcolm will feel that he has helped not only this little boy but in some way Vincent as well. He desperately wants to serve his penance for failing Vincent so that he can find peace. After meeting with Cole for some time, however, he is discouraged by their lack of progress, and when Cole finally tells Malcolm his secret, Malcolm is overwhelmed by the intensity of it and laments, "And I'm not helping him." Faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, he tries to resign as Cole's psychologist, but Cole won't let him give up. Cole insists to Malcolm, "Some magic's real."

Malcolm and his wife. Malcolm's withering relationship with his wife occupies the other half of his consciousness. He spends much of his time watching, listening, and growing increasingly frustrated as her relationship with a coworker deepens. His own encounters with her also leave him feeling powerless and vulnerable. More than anything, he confides to Cole, "I want to be able to talk to my wife again, like we used to. Like we were the only two people in the world."

An astonishing and fundamental change in the viewers' perspective of this relationship comes at the end of the film, when Malcolm's actual situation is revealed: his isolation, his inability to communicate with his wife, and their total estrangement cannot be wholly overcome, for the bullet that shattered Malcolm's professional identity also took his life. Upon a second viewing, the perceived role and character of Anna change completely. She is not sneaking around behind Malcolm's back, beginning an affair with a coworker, and making sarcastic remarks at their anniversary dinner. Now we see Anna as a grieving widow, a woman struggling to cope with the shocking and violent death of her husband and go on with her own life but unable to move into intimacy because memories of Malcolm still haunt her.

Malcolm's redemption. This revelation about Malcolm's death also changes the audience's perception of Malcolm's character in a fundamental way. The viewer, perhaps shocked at this surprise revelation, seeks to remember the tiny details that have foreshadowed this conclusion, aided in this quest by a film montage of formerly puzzling moments that, viewed in this startling new light, now make perfect sense. Who is Malcolm? We now know he is someone who must make his peace with this life before he can go willingly into what comes next. He's someone who died before he was ready. Malcolm must learn something about living before he can learn how to be dead.

Malcolm's two desperate wishes, to find his way to forgiveness through helping Vincent retroactively and Cole currently, and to talk to his wife again, do come true, but not exactly as he had hoped. His redemption comes not from the hoped-for reconciliation with his wife but through Cole's embodiment of forgiveness and his subsequent courage to take the next step. Through his and Cole's common victory and through his full realization of the finality of his situation, Malcolm is able to find the forgiveness and peace that have eluded him throughout the film and say goodbye to his wife.

Cole Seer. Cole Seer is a small, frightened child teetering on the brink. If he does not overcome his fears now, he's likely to end up like the psychologically tormented and despairing Vincent. Cole is a troubled, isolated, terrified boy, but all is not yet lost for him: with panache and surprising maturity, he goes about the task of creating for himself a facade of normalcy. But children are perceptive, and his anxiety and sporadic, intense bouts with terror cause his classmates to label him a freak. The fear that his mother might agree with them keeps Cole from being honest with her and hurts their relationship. Luckily for Cole, his mother's love does not abandon him, even though she is experiencing a mother's desperation.

Cole cannot run away from his fears. No matter where he hides, no matter what sort of sanctuary he claims for himself, his fears continue to haunt him. He searches for protection from his horror-inducing sixth sense in church and in his homemade chapel, filled with soldiers and religious figures. He hides behind those walls, but he can't stay inside them forever. The fear he has of his supernatural visitors is compounded by his fear that anyone who knows the truth will think him a freak. Therefore he bottles up his emotions, refusing to tell anyone what is happening to him, isolating himself from his only potential source of help.

According to Cole, the other kids' opinion of him can be summed up in one word: freak. This wholesale rejection of Cole is epitomized in his classmate Tommy Tommasino, a child actor. Cole's mom has asked Tommy to walk with Cole to school, probably hoping to keep him safe and promote friendship between the two boys. Tommy puts on a show of accepting Cole, throwing his arm around Cole's shoulder as they walk down the sidewalk ... but only as long as Cole's mother can watch them out the window. As soon as they turn the corner, Tommy's behavior turns to taunting and jeers. In a birthday-party scene, when Cole tentatively agrees to participate in the boys' play, they take the opportunity to lock him into a small, frightening cupboard in the attic.

Cole attends a private Catholic school, St. Anthony's Academy, and it provides a ray of hope for him. St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost things and missing people. Could anyone be more lost than Cole at the beginning of this film? Except, perhaps, Malcolm, who is portrayed several times in scenes at this school, including Cole's two school plays. These plays serve as symbols of Cole's interaction with his classmates and his fledgling, hard-won self-esteem.

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The depiction of the first play begins with the words of Tommy's character: "Once there was a boy, very different from all the other boys. He lived in the jungle and could talk to the animals." During the first line of this introduction, the camera is still trained on Cole, shivering and sobbing in his red bedroom chapel. Cole is very unlike the other boys. He lives amid a jungle of dead people who talk to him. The film's motto, "Not every gift is a blessing," is here made painfully clear.

The next school play occurs near the end of the movie after Cole has begun to deal assertively with his fears by listening to and helping the people who come to him. This second play shows that Cole has already begun to find healing. In it, Cole plays stable-boy-turned-King Arthur, the only person able to pull the sword Excalibur from the stone that has held it captive for ages. The other children lift Cole up on their shoulders, celebrating his uniqueness and their common victory. This is a strong reflection of Cole's own recent acceptance of his gift and the realization that his unique ability can be used for good. He even makes amends with Mr. ("Stuttering Stanley") Cunningham in the course of the second play.

Bewildered and frustrated, Cole's mother Lynn knows that something is haunting Cole and begs him many times and with increasing anguish to tell her what it is. But Cole wants to protect this precious relationship and refuses to tell his mother anything that might lead her to think he's a freak. In actuality, Cole's refusal to tell his mother anything is causing her stress and worry. Lynn is depicted as a mother who very much wants to keep her relationship with her son healthy and is extremely worried about his constant fear but has no idea how to help him. She reassures Cole time after time that she would never think he was a freak. She demands answers from the doctor and fights to protect Cole even in her sleep. She is a very dedicated, loving, and frustrated mother.

Cole's secret is putting undue strain on their relationship. His mother says to him during a particular stressful situation, "I don't know if you know this, Cole, but our little family isn't doing so good. I mean, I've been praying. But I must not be praying right. Looks like we're just gonna have to answer each other's prayers.... If we can't talk to each other we're just not gonna make it."

Clearly Cole needs to share his secret with his mother in order to make this strained relationship whole again. The second school play symbolizes the healing of his relationships with his classmates, and the second scene in the church portrays a moving reconciliation with Malcolm, but for him his last confrontation, telling his mother, is perhaps the most significant one for Cole. This is what he has been craving and dreading throughout the whole movie. Through his interactions with Malcolm, who also assures him fiercely that he's "not a freak," Cole slowly gains the courage to face his fears, talk to the ghosts and listen to them. When he does that, he is finally able to accept the forgiveness--for having a supernatural gift, for being "unlike the other boys." And then he can open up to his mother. He does it in a simple, touching way that only a child is capable of: "Grandma says hi ... she said to tell you, she saw you dance." The redemption that Cole experiences is the redemption of forgiveness, the lessening of his fears, and the transformation of his desperation.

Cole and Malcolm. In the church, in deep anguish, Cole cries to God. Shortly afterward he meets Malcolm, an acclaimed child psychologist who makes house calls and who meets him in the depths of his darkness. Cole and Malcolm, each in unique situations, form a remarkable and symbiotic relationship based on trust and mutual acceptance. Cole and Malcolm have some striking similarities, not the least of which is that they are both gifted in special ways. Malcolm's gift is in his work. After losing all self-confidence in the clash with Vincent, Malcolm needs to be able to reclaim his gift. Cole's gift is his extraordinary ability to communicate in a supernatural way with people who are already dead. He fears his gift and has trouble accepting it. In the end, Cole and Malcolm use their extraordinary gifts to help each other and to spread out the network of helping beyond themselves. In Cole and Malcolm, two lost souls groping around in the darkness of fear and despair find each other and mutual redemption.

Analysis of four key sequences

My analysis of the film's treatment of religious themes centers around four key sequences that catapult religion and religious themes to the film's foreground: the two scenes with Malcolm and Cole in the local church and the two sequences in Cole's house in which Cole's own homemade shelter, the red tent/shrine he's erected in his bedroom, serves as his immediate refuge and sanctuary.

1. "De profundis clamo ad te Domine": The depths of despair. Ten minutes into the story we meet Cole Seer, who emerges from the doorway of a Philadelphia brown-stone, dons a pair of ridiculous spectacles, and dashes down the block to arrive, panting, at the bright red door of the local church. Following him equally speedily down the sidewalk is the child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe, recently honored by the mayor for his therapeutic work with disturbed children and shot in the stomach by one of his few former failures. Gunshots and Vincent's impassioned cry of "You failed me!" still ringing in our ears, we read in Dr. Crowe's notes in the next sequence that Cole's case eerily mirrors Vincent's. This child scurrying frantically toward the church has been diagnosed with acute anxiety and a possible mood disorder, and these along with his social isolation forecast to the attentive viewer that Cole's chances of turning out just like the haunted Vincent Gray are uncomfortably high.

Malcolm is a child psychologist in the unique position to redirect Cole's sad story before it develops into the terror he has experienced in Vincent. His own despair, which will be further developed as we are introduced to the dynamics of his relationship with his wife, is a direct result of coming face to face with his own failure.

Cole enters the church and is followed a few seconds later by Malcolm, who finds Cole crouching in the shadows behind a pew. Cole, playing with some plastic soldiers, says: "De profundis clamo ad te, Domine"--Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Cole's first words are to quote Psalm 130 in Latin, a line from the Catholic Mass for the Dead. In his first lines of dialogue, Cole lets us knows that he sees no way out. In the depths of despair, he comes to the church to seek comfort, surrounding himself with both spiritual and military protection. Cole understands his "gift" as a terrible transgression. He finds no way out on his own and invokes God's help.

In this scene Malcolm and Cole meet each other for the first time. Is this an answer to Cole's prayer? Because it is their first meeting, this scene sets the standard for their interactions with one another. Their interaction almost always takes place at eye level, signifying that they are in some way equals. Often--seven times in this sequence--a cutaway shot is used to depict Malcolm's face as seen over Cole's shoulder. The position of interviewer is the one with the authority to moderate, the emcee of the event. In this scene Malcolm is making the rules and acting in his authority as psychologist, asking Cole some fairly standard questions, all the while allowing Cole to retain a certain amount of control. (To Cole's question "I'm going to see you again, right?" Malcolm responds "If that's OK with you.") Their first counseling session takes place in church. The topic: despair ... and, just maybe, hope. Cole is convinced that the one who came to him in the church is the only one who can help him.

There are ministry implications here regarding home visits and incarnation. Malcolm's coming to meet Cole in his place of sanctuary is clearly a pastoral home visit. In fact, Malcolm meets Cole in this film only in Cole's "homes": in the church he has chosen as his sanctuary, in the school where he spends his days, at home with his mother. It is difficult to imagine that Cole would respond as well to a psychologist on his own turf: in a sterile office, with no protective qualities. In fact, Cole himself says to Malcolm later in the film, "You are the only one who can help me. I know it." Perhaps it is only a man in Malcolm's situation, with a connection to both this world and the next, who can be accepted by Cole in his "homes."

Malcolm's willingness to step into Cole's darkness and to accompany him into the light may remind us of a God who doesn't allow humans to suffer alone, who orchestrated and participated in the incarnation so that humans could meet God at "eye level," the God who came fully to us, for us, as us. In the movie, Malcolm is the first ghost Cole is able to talk to, because Malcolm is not angry or scary. Malcolm seeks for himself forgiveness and redemption, but along the way what he most wants to do is help Cole. And so he comes wholly into Cole's life. We can learn something about the incarnation from Malcolm's character: Jesus became human, understood our uncertainties and foibles, and met us at eye level.

There are ministry implications also for pastoral care and counseling. At first glance, this sequence portrays the first counseling session between a child psychologist and his child patient. But for those who are already familiar with the movie's final secret, the sequence raises a much deeper question. It is a question similar to the one that many new pastors face: How can a young, naive, and inexperienced pastor offer pastoral care to people with much more life experience? Here the question is paradoxical and challenging: How can a dead man teach a child how to live? The two will help each other to cope with the extremely difficult transitions that face each of them: Malcolm's transition into death, Cole's into life.

2. "DO NOT ENTER." This sequence happens about 50 minutes into the movie, just after Cole has told Malcolm his secret in the hospital: "I see dead people.... Walking around, like regular people. They don't know they're dead." And for the first time, the viewers are about to experience that reality. Until now we have seen only Cole's (and Vincent's) terrified face, and his wounds, but now that he has told Malcolm (and us) his secret, we too have joined the family of "Seers."

It is the middle of the night, and Cole has just come home from the hospital. He hasn't yet taken off his hospital wristband. His door opens just a crack. He peeks out and opens the door wide enough to stand in the doorway. His fear is apparent, as is his need for the toilet. The demands of internal plumbing win out, and he dashes down the hall into the bathroom.

This sequence depicts Cole's fear by drawing us right into it. We hear the breathy music, we see the pink-bathrobed figure slip past him and go into the kitchen, we watch the thermometer drop ten degrees in as many seconds, we see Cole's breath and his terrified face. And then we are walking down the hall with him and peering into the kitchen. With utter relief, he speaks to the red-haired woman whose back is turned to him, "Mama?" But, as the filmmakers have indicated to us to through music, picture, and one chilling close-up, things are not what they seem. "No!" exclaims the woman angrily, turning around. Enveloped by her own anger, she doesn't seem to notice what Cole has said or even notice him at all. Terrified at the sight of her wounded wrists, he sprints down the hall amid her explosive flow of invective directed at her (absent) former husband Lenny.

Cole dives feet first into his homemade sanctuary of red blankets and turns on a flashlight whose light illuminates the close-up shot of the Jesus figure that Cole took from the church in the first sequence with Malcolm. Jesus wears a red cloak. During this two-second shot, the music changes drastically. Still breathy and eerie, it now picks up another layer, almost reminiscent of a church choir. The next image consists of a multitude of religious figures and plastic soldiers standing on shelves on three walls of the homemade tent. Cole is still hyperventilating and says to himself, barely recognizably, "Oh God ... oh God ... I'm ok, ok ... I'm ok...." Clearly he feels some modicum of safety in this makeshift chapel. A close-up image of Jesus underscores Cole's feeling of comfort derived from being in the relative safety of his improvised sanctuary.

This scene has several distinguishing features that lend prominence to some technical motifs of the film. For one, the color red absolutely dominates the sequence. Red here represents the precarious security Cole wins by barricading himself from his ghosts in his makeshift chapel. The use of this color was no coincidence but a very intentional decision of the directive team. Director Shyamalan reports, "We used the color red to indicate anything in the real world that has been tainted by the other world." Producer Barry Mendel adds, "Red is used specifically to connote really explosively emotional moments and situations." (3)

Anna, Malcolm's wife, gives her coworker a book wrapped in red and wears a red dress to her anniversary dinner in the restaurant. Malcolm can't open the red doorknob leading to his basement. A red balloon drifts up to the ceiling near where the boys lock Cole in. The mother of Kyra, a young ghost girl, wears a bright red dress and red lipstick at Kyra's wake. The overwhelming presence of the color red in this current sequence, especially the tent, indicates its close link to the other side. And by filling his refuge with religious figures, Cole has also linked the color red with his religious quest for safety and redemption. The sharp observer will have already noticed the bright red church door and Jesus' bright red cloak.

A second example of the technical motifs visible in this sequence is the sounds and music used to evoke "the other side." Composer John Howard Newton and director Shyamalan worked together to find just the right thematic and musical sound for The Sixth Sense. Their guiding question, as Shyamalan remembers it, was "the sixth sense, the ability to feel the other world: what is that musically?" Newton remarks that he wanted to be able to portray both the frightening aspects of the sixth sense and their beneficent side. (4)

In the end, they modeled the background noise on human breath. In fact, the background noise was humans breathing. They used the recorded sounds of men, women, and children breathing in order to lend an eerie background quality to every scene that had to do with the other side. The music in the film is not all produced by musical instruments. Much of it is composed of human voices crying, groaning, and screaming. The noises of any one individual are not recognizable because so many were used. The end effect sounds much like a synthesizer or an eerie supernatural orchestra and lends an otherworldly, spiritual quality to the entire film.

3. "How do you know for sure?" "I don't": Despair to faith. This is the second of two sequences that take place within the church building. It is the same church as before, but at the beginning of the sequence we see that the relationship between Malcolm and Cole has changed quite a bit. The last time they had spoken to each other, Malcolm had attempted to resign as Cole's doctor, thinking he would not be able to both help Cole and reconcile with his wife. Cole, horrified, came directly to the point with his questioning: "You believe me, right? Dr. Crowe, you believe my secret, right?... How can you help me if you don't believe me?... Some magic's real." That was exactly the reason Malcolm had not been able to help Cole: he didn't believe him.

Cole clearly has the upper hand in this argument. We viewers know this because we, too, have seen Cole's ghosts. In the story world, Cole is not delusional, nor is he hallucinating. He has told the truth, and Malcolm does not believe it. In the first half of this church sequence, Cole is playing with his soldiers in the choir loft when Malcolm comes in. The camera angles emphasize not only the physical distance between Cole and Malcolm but also the fact the Cole is above Malcolm. The shots of Cole are now taken not at eye level, a tendency that the previous church sequence had established, but from a low angle. This type of shot marks the subject as important, powerful, or larger than life. In contrast, the shots of Malcolm are high-angle shots (the bird's-eye view), which imply to the viewer that the subject is of lesser stature, intelligence, or value. Cole is in charge, but he senses that this relationship is not the healthy one. He is, after all, a child, and Dr. Crowe should be in charge. He offers Malcolm the power position: "Do you wanna ask me questions now?" He doesn't. He doesn't want to play soldiers, either, and Cole notices that something has happened. "Something happened, didn't it?" he asks perceptively.

Yes, something has definitely happened. But what? As a response to Cole's question, Malcolm asks Cole, "Do you know what 'Yo no quiero morir' means? It's Spanish. It means 'I don't want to die.'" This statement, perhaps initially bewildering to Cole, serves as both apology and credo, whereby Malcolm lets Cole know exactly what has happened: he has found a way to believe Cole's story, has made that incredible spring from his belief in the absolute principles of psychology to his belief in Cole's impossible story. This revelation immediately triggers forgiveness between the two of them and puts them back at eye level. In the next shot both Cole and Malcolm are on the main floor of the church, standing in the aisle. Their relationship is restored through Malcolm's belief in Cole's story and Cole's forgiveness of himself and of Malcolm, and the tension, built up by means of the uncomfortable distance between them, dissipates.

In the first church sequence, Malcolm entered Cole's life in a way that can enlighten for us the doctrine of the Incarnation. Malcolm came to Cole in a church, at eye level, and entered into his life. Since then he has experienced through Cole's eyes his mother's love, his classmates' merciless teasing, and his small triumphs. Malcolm has become Cole's trusted friend and even experienced Cole's private nightmares. Malcolm's character helps us to experience in an embodied way a bit of the Christian understanding of Christology.

In this second church sequence, however, a separation exists between Cole and Malcolm, and the rift is made more apparent through staging and camera angles. From a theological perspective, the distance between the two main characters is simply called sin. Sin is, in its most simplified form, the separation from God, and it is portrayed in this sequence by the awkward and artificial separation of the two main characters from each other, not only in their dynamics but also through their physical positions. Cole fears that his supernatural abilities themselves are a sin, and Malcolm's sin is the classic sin of unbelief.

Theologically intertwined with the doctrine of the Incarnation is the Christian understanding of salvation, the forgiveness of sins. The purpose of forgiveness, comments David Cunningham, is "to bring about reconciliation, to mend the breach that has opened up between two human beings." (5) And this is a breach that needs mending. With his declaration to Cole that he now believes Cole's story, Malcolm indicates that he realizes his mistake (his sin) and is sorry for it. With his apology to Cole, Malcolm is at the same time apologizing to Vincent for the same sin he had committed ten years ago: not believing. Cole is very willing to accept the apology, to meet Malcolm again at eye level.

Malcolm displays a sincere desire to be forgiven: has he wanted anything else in the film? The forgiveness is signified by the characters' movement toward one another and the lessening of the camera- and distance-induced tension between them. The sequence, then, plays a pivotal role in Cole's redemption.

But how has Malcolm arrived at his astonishing conclusion that Cole is telling the truth? What allowed Malcolm to look beyond the psychological ideals that had accompanied him so far on his professional journey and see the truth in impossibility? Malcolm's leap of faith closely parallels the "movements of faith" described by Soren Kierkegaard in his book Fear and Trembling. According to Kierkegaard, life has three stages: the aesthetic life, the ethical life, and the religious life. In the film Malcolm has clearly moved beyond the aesthetic life. His life at the beginning of the movie strikingly reflects Kierkegaard's "tragic hero," who models the ethical life. "The tragic hero," explains Kierkegaard, "is great by reason of his moral virtue." (6) He delights in his work and does it well. At the beginning of the film, Crowe is portrayed as an excellent child psychologist whose results are so good that even the office of the Mayor of Philadelphia has recognized his skill and honored him with a plaque.

Clearly his dedication to his work and his outstanding efforts mark Crowe as a man of great moral virtue. Crowe lived his life for others, the children he served, so intensely that his wife even remarked, "Finally someone is recognizing the sacrifices you've made, that you have put everything second, including me, for those families that they're talking about."

Kierkegaard's tragic hero "does not enter into any private relationship with the deity, but for him the ethical is the divine." (7) In an otherwise religious and spiritual movie, Crowe's life is portrayed as secular, albeit very ethical. Rational thinking, his professional code of ethics, and the principles of child psychology have guided him to a successful and selfless career, and he is satisfied until he comes into contact with a former patient whom he was unable to help. His absolute ideals, the principles of modern psychology, are called into question in an abrupt and absolute way. This crisis is what makes Kierkegaard's hero so tragic. Malcolm's experience with Vincent sends him into a personal crisis and depression, and he wavers in his heretofore unquestioned devotion to his methods. Then he meets Cole and tries to help Cole with those same methods that had been so successful in almost every other case. And again his methods bring no results.

After Cole finally tells Malcolm his secret, Malcolm dictates his notes: "Cole: his pathology is more severe than initially assessed. He's suffering from visual hallucinations, paranoia, some kind of school-age schizophrenia. Medication and hospitalization may be required." Then he clicks off the tape recorder and says to no one in particular, "and I'm not helping him." Here two of Malcolm's highest ideals come into direct conflict: his training and successful implementation of modern psychological methods, and his utter devotion to the people who are his clients, to believing their stories. What happens when these ideals become mutually exclusive?

Malcolm's tried-and-true methods are drawing a blank. He is on the cusp of the Kierkegaardian "first movement of faith," the infinite resignation, where the tragic hero realizes through the conflict of ideals that his criteria are absolutely arbitrary and that he must give up his principles.

Not everyone who succeeds in giving up his or her former principles is able to move on from the ethical life into the next stage, the religious life. That, according to Kierkegaard, requires a belief in the impossible, an embracing of absurdity, a leap of faith. Will this renowned, secular, rational, psychologist be able to affirm the impossible, to "grasp existence by virtue of faith"? The viewer must live in this tension for a while, as other subplots are developed and interwoven, but the pendulum eventually swings back to Malcolm on the brink of a potential leap of faith.

Confused and anxious, Malcolm first tries to quit. He tells Cole, "I can't be your doctor anymore. Someone else can help you." Cole, absolutely convinced that no one else can, does his best to persuade Malcolm that they can only fight this obstacle together. He introduces belief into the conversation: "You believe me, right? Dr. Crowe, you believe my secret, right?" Not wanting to say no, Malcolm says instead. "I don't know how to answer that, Cole." Cole, hearing the truth, sobs, "How can you help me if you don't believe me?"

Cut to Malcolm in his basement office, searching among his records for a way to believe Cole. Cole has already told us that ghosts "only see what they want to see." Perhaps that holds true for the sense of hearing as well, for Malcolm now comes across something he's never heard before, "hidden in plain view" on Vincent Gray's session tapes. Malcolm leaves the room; when he comes back it has become cold, and Vincent is sobbing. He plays the tape again ... and again ... and then, in the silence, he hears another voice. "Yo no quiero morir," it pleads. "Senor, salvame. Yo no quiero morir." Lord, save me. I don't want to die. "Oh, my God," Malcolm whispers.

What Malcolm hears is the impossible. These are completely contradictory experiences: the office, empty except for his nine-year-old client; and the voice on the tape, begging not to die. In order to believe Vincent, and Cole, what Malcolm must do here is affirm the impossible. He must throw away everything rational that he has learned and embrace the utter absurdity of voices from beyond the grave. "This is quite as clear to the knight of faith, so the only thing that can save him is the absurd, and this he grasps by faith. So he recognizes the impossibility, and that very instant he believes the absurd." (8) With his impassioned whisper "Oh, my God," and the stunned realization that accompanies it, Malcolm courageously resigns his post as the tragic hero, bows his head, and becomes the "knight of faith."

With the courage of faith, Malcolm, already dead, gains eternity. He realizes that he finally is able to believe Cole's story. His old ideals, those of rational and psychological thinking patterns, have been thoroughly relativized. In this new stage of "religious life," Malcolm recognizes that there are no absolutes and is ready to affirm the paradox of Cole's sixth sense. He takes the leap of faith, and then he does it one better: he goes back to Cole, finding him, of all places, in the church. But this time he approaches Cole not as an ethical tragic hero but as a knight of faith.

Cole, with all his childlike innocence and remarkable awareness, perceives and is even able to name the change that has happened in Malcolm. As knight-of-faith vocabulary is unknown to him, he translates it into much more understandable nine-year-old English: "Are you wiggin' out?" This strikes Malcolm as just exactly what he is doing, and he responds in the affirmative: "Yes, I think I am." The walls of tension between them come crashing down. "Wigging out" is as good a modern interpretation of "embracing the absurd" as any I've heard.

In this sequence our knight of faith becomes a model of faith for Cole. Now that he has experienced this conversion, Malcolm is fully able to approach Cole in a posture of faith. Kierkegaard remarks, "the true knight of faith is a witness, never a teacher, and therein lies his deep humanity." (9) Malcolm witnesses his newfound belief to Cole. And now, for the first time, Cole has told someone his secret, and for the first time, someone believes it. He is no longer alone.

Perhaps it is this show of faith that encourages Cole to listen to Malcolm's suggestion: "I think I might know a way to make them go away.... Listen to them." But still Cole has a hard time believing in this answer and challenges Malcolm, "How do you know for sure?" So much hangs on this answer. Cole is not likely to believe an easy answer, having wrestled for so long with the question. And Malcolm offers no easy answer, just the truth. "I don't know," he states. Because he is now in this stage of "religious life," he can accept statements without proof, fully irrational and absurd statements, and believe them. Cole, who lives in paradox, seems to be OK with this answer. Perhaps "I don't know" is actually the only answer Cole could have accepted.

In the first church scene, Cole's desperation was clearly depicted through Malcolm's notes, his own terrified behavior and his words. Now, one story-hour later, this despair is transformed into faith, through Malcolm's leap of faith and their common faith in a possible solution. In this church, Cole's despair is transformed into the hope of a new life, free from the fear that plagues him. Through his leap of faith, Malcolm's own despair is also alleviated, and he thereby regains, at least partially, the sense of himself and his purpose that has eluded him since the shooting.

In Dietrich Rossler's theory of practical theology, he describes the varying roles of a pastoral-care provider as confessor, teacher, and counselor. (10) We have already seen that Malcolm teaches and counsels Cole. It is therefore not surprising that Malcolm fulfills also the third pastoralcare role (confessor); unexpected, perhaps, is that Cole in turn fulfills this role for Malcolm. In a sequence that precedes this one, Cole tells his secret to Malcolm: "I see dead people." Although the setting is a hospital room, a very similar conversation could have taken place in a confessional. Cole's secret was his confession, and he shared it with Malcolm in that context. In this sequence Malcolm finally reacts with a type of "absolution" for Cole--in this case Malcolm's belief in Cole's story. That is the forgiveness Cole has been searching for: the ability to be fully known to someone and not considered a freak. The confession scene begun in the hospital room is here brought full circle with this absolution. The words "I believe you" or "I forgive you" are not spoken directly but are translated into the context. Striking is that this scene of absolution does take place inside a church.

In a similar way, Cole acts as "Father Confessor" to Malcolm in the same two sequences. He asks Malcolm in the hospital room to "tell me a story about why you're sad," in response to which Malcolm "confesses" that he is feeling awful about not helping Vincent and about the growing rift between him and his wife. This show of honesty is what encourages Cole to confess his own secret shortly afterward. Cole's offer of absolution to Malcolm comes also in nonreligious language: he offers Malcolm the satisfaction of having successfully helped Cole cope with the transition into life.

4. "I'm feeling much better now": Fear to redemption. For the first 116 seconds of this 130-second scene, not a single word is spoken. This is another of the scary scenes in this movie, and action takes precedence over speaking. The sequence begins almost immediately after the previous church scene, that same night. Cole has just comforted his mother, who was having a bad dream, and now he kneels in front of his tent-sanctuary in a position very reminiscent of bedtime prayers.

We know that no night is safe for Cole, and this night will be no exception. We see Cole's breath immediately. Noticing the cold and perhaps the hairs on the back of his neck prickling, he stands up with a sense of urgency to repair the tent wall that fell when he hurried to his mother's side. A slanted shot of the hallway and that trademark breathy, eerie music up the ante, and finally he finishes and dives frantically inside, pulling the "doors" closed behind him. In one of two long camera pans in this sequence, we see Cole turn on his flashlight and direct his attention at the ceiling of his tent, where the blankets start to slowly rip apart from each other. The clothespins pop, allowing his sanctuary to tumble to the floor. The intensity of the music increases.

The camera continues its pan to the far wall of the tent, where a very unhealthy-looking girl is frothing at the mouth! Cole comes tearing out of the tent and dives into the living room behind the couch. He gazes at the front door, still safely deadbolted. He takes a deep breath, thinks for a second, and something registers in his eyes. In the next shot Cole is standing in the doorway of his bedroom, still crying but with determination in his eyes. Slowly, his hand reaches out to remove the blankets from the red-swathed figure of the girl. The music crescendos and then simply stops as the blanket falls down and the figure of the girl becomes visible again. Clearly not well, she retches again and then says to Cole, "I'm feeling much better now." Steeling himself, he looks her in the eye and asks, "Do you want to tell me something?"

This sequence clearly depicts a transformation. Cole, who at first wants nothing more than to run away, instead goes back in to face his fear head-on. The music builds up to a scary crescendo that doesn't peak, because Cole has transformed the scariness of the situation into something almost mundane. When Cole goes back, when the blankets come off, the girl states simply, "I'm feeling much better now." By going back into that room Cole has set off a chain reaction of redemption. It will touch the girl herself, who is clearly feeling much better now; the girl's family (Cole's actions probably save the little sister's life); Cole himself, his mother, Malcolm, and the many other ghosts that Cole will help.

It is doubtless significant that this staging of redemption happened in the very place where he had been longing for it--the sanctuary he'd built against his own personal hell. Those walls came tumbling down. But were they the walls of his safety, of his sanctuary? or were they the walls of his fears? The redemptive power within that chapel, the sanctuary that he'd claimed for himself, does not disappear as the walls come down. Instead it spreads. Afterward, Cole has the courage to tell his mother his secret, to bridge the rift that has been threatening to separate them.

In this sequence we see that it is only the knowledge of the sacred ritual that awaits him that allows Cole to rip himself out of his fear and return to the scene of it. He knows that he has an assignment to listen to this young girl and that her appearance is the beginning of the ritual whose end must be an action on his part. This ritual takes on an almost sacramental nature, because it is established by a suggestion from the quasi-religious figure in the movie ("Listen to them") and linked to the implicit promise that only in this way will Cole find healing and refuge from his fear.

Conclusion: Religious themes in The Sixth Sense

The transformation of Malcolm's and Cole's fears and despair into faith and redemption is the main thrust of the plot of The Sixth Sense and makes the film an excellent candidate for this type of religious analysis. Woven into the story line are many broken and healing relationships, which create the basis for the characters' interactions with each other and the audience's emotional connection to them. Their broken relationships cause them fear, despair, and spiritual hunger, and the process of healing those broken relationships is for Malcolm and Cole inextricably intertwined with their journey toward faith and redemption.

Malcolm's journey is not a smooth one; it is in fact characterized by a giant spring, his "leap of faith." In order to make that leap he was required to give up the principles and ideals that had held him fast in rationality and accept the absurd impossibility of Cole's situation. However, we find, with Malcolm, that in doing so one does not lose but rather gains. "By faith I make renunciation of nothing, on the contrary, by faith I acquire everything, precisely in the sense in which it is said that he who has faith like a grain of mustard can remove mountains." (11) The acquisition for Malcolm is immense. His leap of faith, his transformation, allows him both to guide Cole into a new life and to accept guidance into his own death.

Although the film has no priest, pastor, rabbi, or other recognizable religious figure, these prominent themes of faith and redemption make The Sixth Sense a film to be taken theologically seriously. What sort of answer does it propose to the question "How should we live"? Which type of behavior does it glamorize as a potential answer to this question? I argue that the film's answer to the question is a simple one: We should live not only ethically but also faithfully.

1. M. Night Shyamalan, "Behind the Scenes: Cinematic Success," on The Sixth Sense Bonus DVD, MAWA Film & Medien, 2000 (German version).

2. Shyamalan, "Behind the Scenes: Interview with the Director," The Sixth Sense Bonus DVD.

3. Barry Mendel, "Behind the Scenes: Rules and Clues," The Sixth Sense Bonus DVD.

4. John Howard Newton, "Behind the Scenes: Music and Sound Design," The Sixth Sense Bonus DVD.

5. David S. Cunningham, Reading is Believing: The Christian Faith through Literature and Film (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2002), 186.

6. Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1872.

7. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1871.

8. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id= 1872.

9. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling. http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1873.

10. Michael Schibilsky, "Einfuhrung in die Praktische Theologie" (Introduction to Practical Theology) lecture course, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, December 3, 2003.

11. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1873

Jessica Nipp

Wittenberg, Germany

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