One of the harshest aspects of life is when you lose something important to you that you know you’ll never get back. You tend to focus more on what isn’t there than what is. Even though you’re still alive, you forget how to live again. If you want to incorporate film in your teaching lessons, The Sixth Sense would be a great film to show students how to move forward with their lives after suffering a loss.
M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense is one of his best movies, especially for your Halloween film collection. The main characters in this psychological thriller are all finding it hard to move forward from tragedy. Dr. Malcolm Crowe just won an award for the work he’s done as a child psychologist only for a former patient, Vincent, to break into his home and shoot him for not helping him successfully with his problems. His new patient, Cole Spear, is mourning his father who left him after his parent’s divorce by wearing his glasses and keeping his broken watch. Cole’s mother, Lynn, is also mourning her husband's abandonment, as well as the death of her own mother. All three of these characters are struggling to find a solution as grief clouds their judgment.
A supernatural element is added to the movie when Cole reveals to Dr. Crowe that he can see ghosts. They walk around like everyday people only seeing what they want to see. They have no idea they are no longer alive and struggle to understand what is going on with them. All they can see is their own pain. They cannot move on to the afterlife because they’re fixated on business that was left unfinished.
The American Cancer Society has a list of coping mechanisms to better deal with loss. One way is to acknowledge every feeling you have. Dr. Crowe tells Cole that he’s sad he cannot communicate with his wife anymore and the guilt he feels for having not been able to help Vincent. Cole reveals he cannot tell his mother about his secret because he's afraid of what she'll think of him. By the end of the movie, Dr. Crowe and Cole inspire each other to bridge the communication gap with their loved ones and it leads to the process of healing.
Another mechanism is to let yourself feel pain and other emotions. Throughout the film, we see him try to talk with his emotionally distant wife after the shooting but she ignores him. Well, there’s a little twist as to why that is—because Dr. Crowe is one of Cole’s ghosts. He sees what he wants to see the same way people grieving do. He walked around believing he was wearing his wedding ring when his wife held onto it the whole time. The bullet hole in his stomach was still there. He couldn’t open the door to his cellar because it was barricaded by a bookshelf after his death. His wife ate meals alone as she grieved for him. Once he discovered he died the night he got shot, everything became clear.
Cole also only saw what he wanted to see by running away from every ghost he encountered, as well as his mother, instead of facing them. When we’re in mourning, any negative feelings we experience will hurt much more. But, Dr. Crowe encourages Cole to face his ghosts and he helps them find the closure they need to move on.
In grief, we’re all looking for closure. We want answers as to why these things happen to us and what could have been. In the pivotal scene when Cole and his mother talk while stuck in traffic, he reveals he can not only see ghosts but the ghost of his grandmother. He tells Lynn that her mother attended the dance recital she thought she didn’t show up to and how proud she is of her every day. That was what Lynn needed to hear in order to be a strong parent for Cole and their new life going forward.
One more mechanism for coping with grief is forgiveness for what you did or didn’t do. Dr. Crowe never got to tell his wife that she was never second in his life. She needed to know that despite the hard work he accomplished in his career, she was still important to him. So with the closure that he helped his wife heal with her grief as well as repaired his past through Cole, he could move forward.
The Sixth Sense can be an educational film, teaching audiences not to dwell in the past and to take their time to heal. Consider adding The Sixth Sense to your library shelves not only for the horror and drama sections but to teach your patrons or students how to move on after tragedy.
Purchase The Sixth Sense on Blu-ray.