Through close analysis of the restaurant scene and the scene where Dr Crow is in the house with both Cole and Cole's mother, discus the techniques used to make the audience believe Dr Crow is alive.

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Through close analysis of the restaurant scene and the scene where Dr Crow is in the house with both Cole and Cole’s mother, discus the techniques used to make the audience believe Dr Crow is alive.

The sixth sense impressed film critics when it was released in 1999. The film uses the assumption of the audience that Dr Crow is alive to feed the story line and shock the viewers at the end. M. Night Shyamalan the director uses many different techniques to achieve this varying from colours to camera angles; in this essay I am going to analyse two important scenes from early on in the film that play a key part in the audiences belief that Dr Crow is alive. These scenes are: the restaurant scene and the scene where Dr Cole is in the house with Cole’s mother.

We see Dr Crow in different ways in the two scenes; in the scene with Cole’s mother he seems professional and in control. While Cole’s Mother is talking to him we get several medium close ups of Dr Crow he is smiling to himself. We take this as an air of professionalism; we think he is observing their relationship. He is smiling to himself we think he might be happy as earlier in the film Dr Crow discovers scratches on Cole’s arms which could have been caused by the mother but on observing their obviously loving relationship he realises he is wrong.  However the way we perceive him in the restaurant scene is different. Instead of seeming professional and in control he now is awkward. As an audience we think his wife is not speaking to him because she is angry, that he forgot about their anniversary. We know he’s late because of the way he walks in quickly and then apologises; it now appears that the thing he is in control of before (his work) is what is losing him the control of other parts of his life. Of course in actual fact the audience is unaware of the fact that the reason his wife seems distant is not because she is angry but actually mourning him on their anniversary.  Death is an important theme in this film. The question of life after death is raised but not completely answered. The film more deals with the effect it has on others. Anna has to deal with the grief of losing a loved one and as we see in the restaurant it is a difficult process for her. Dr Crow does not believe he is dead, he wanders the earth as a ghost because he has unfinished business on earth. It is only when he has helped Cole and settled things with his wife that he is free to move on.

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The body language between characters also makes us perceive that they can see Dr Crown like we can. In the scene with Cole’s mum and Dr Crow the scene opens on a medium shot of Dr Crow and Cole’s mum sitting down opposite each other. Their knees are angled away from each other; we feel like we have walked in on a conversation that has just ended and are now in an awkward silence. We see Dr Crow looking at Cole’s Mother so we assume that she can see him too. In the restaurant scene we see the Dr ...

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