- Okay, so who has the better wig?
Vondie Curtis-Hall or Sam Jackson?
- Vondie Curtis-Hall.
Knock out Vondie Curtis-Hall,
one, two punch with that wig,
one whip that way, one whip that way.
- [Jourdain] Hey, welcome to Black Film School
where we talk about Hollywood classics
and then offer up lesser known films for the canon.
(upbeat music)
This episode, we're going to be discussing
M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense from 1999
and Kasi Lemmons' Eve's Bayou from 1997.
So if you have not seen The Sixth Sense or Eve's Bayou,
stop right now because we will be discussing spoilers.
- [Sarah-Tai] So, The Sixth Sense
is a 1999, supernatural, thriller, horror film
written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
And it stars Bruce Willis as a child psychologist,
whose patient played by a little Haley Joel Osment
can commune with the dead.
- [Cole] (whispering) I want to tell you my secret now.
- (whispering) Okay.
(suspenseful music)
- I see dead people.
- One thing that I really applaud
M. Night Shyamalan for doing well
is making me forget about the fact
that the Bruce Willis character was shot
in the beginning of the movie,
because spoiler, you know,
when we find out Bruce Willis's character
is in fact dead.
It was a great moment for me because I never was clued in.
You know what I mean?
And I read that at one point, execs were kind of nervous
that we're going to be giving that away
really early in that scene, especially in the shot,
we're pushing it on his face.
When he says, "I see dead people,"
that we're going to be giving a hint to the audience
that he is in fact one of those dead people.
- I thought you meant the other Italian restaurant
I asked you to marry me in.
- What I think is really fascinating
about the film is that like no one,
except Haley Joel Osment,
speaks directly to Bruce Willis after he's shot,
but Bruce Willis is constantly in rooms with people,
like Toni Collette and the actress who plays his ex-wife,
and they're not talking to him
and they don't seem aware of them,
but they're also like incredibly sad characters.
So one could infer that they just like
don't have a lot to say in general
or don't really want to say more words than necessary.
- That's the saddest thing about the movie.
It's like, what is your base relationship
with your wife and with people in general
and the way you communicate have to be
that you could literally be dead
and you wouldn't notice any other changes.
Like if people weren't answering my questions,
everyone would know
that I need to know the answer to my questions, you know?
- Grandma says hi.
She wanted me to tell you, - Oh, please.
she wanted me to tell you, she saw you dance.
She said, when you were little,
you and her had a fight right before your dance recital.
You thought she didn't come see you dance.
She did.
- Yeah, that's the best scene in the movie.
- Damn you, M. Night Shyamalan!
- It's the best possible way for a scene like that.
Like, there are so many ways that you could play it.
You know, when you're telling your mom that you can speak
to dead people,
there's so many ways that that can go
and M. Night really chose like the most tender way
to go about that revelation.
- Sometimes when you're watching
really emotionally, depthy scenes
with an adult actor and a child actor,
the adult's kind of the one cementing the performances,
but here it's like, it's really equitable
in a really impressive way.
And it's, they're on the same level in this scene.
And it's kind of mind blowing how real it feels
and how real it's been written.
- Also, one of the things
that I really love in a performance
is the ability to hold a strong performance
when you're not speaking, but when you're listening.
And Toni Collette,
she's just listening to this story,
and Shyamalan has the discipline to just stay on her
and to not cut to who's talking.
And that's what I think the strength of this scene is.
- So if you like moody, supernatural films
with amazing child performances,
then you'll probably love 1997's Eve' Bayou,
directed by Kasi Lemmons.
- [Kevin] Eve's Bayou is the debut feature film
of Kasi Lemmons
and follows a 10 year old girl named Eve Batiste
as she moves throughout her life with her father and family
in the Bayous of Louisiana.
And we soon learn that she has this ability
to foresee things that happen in the future
- [Fortune Teller] Empty it.
You're in pain, my daughter.
- (whispering) Yes.
- There is an end to your problem,
though not one you imagined.
Look to your children.
Dollar.
- It's always been refreshing to come back to Eve's Bayou
to see how Kasi deals with voodoo and spiritual healing.
A lot of movies use voodoo and spiritual healing
as a device, as a hard device.
And usually those who are engaging in the practice
are antagonists and they're horrific,
and it's like,
actually this is a practice that has been celebrated
and should continue to be celebrated
that's brought from the motherland.
And so it's refreshing to see it depicted
in such a beautiful way.
- Cisely!
(whispering) Oh my god.
- You almost gave your mama a heart attack chère.
- Where the hell did you go?
- I went to visit daddy.
Then I went to the beauty parlor.
I walked all the way to daddy's office.
And then I caught the bus to Opels'.
and I'm alive Mama.
- It's really unspoken
that she's clearly trying to be her mom.
I think it's because this Cisely is so isolated,
that she doesn't really know
how to like deal with her puberty
in a way outside of her family.
She never meets any like boys or anything.
It's just so much is concentrated at home.
That her concept of womanhood
is concentrated entirely by her family.
- You lied to me about daddy.
You lied!
Daddy wrote Mozelle a letter!
You lied!
- I wasn't lying.
- I believed you!
I hated him for you.
- So, Eve has read a letter
that her father wrote to her sister, Mozelle,
about the night of the storm
and the kiss between him and his daughter Cisely.
And at this point in the film,
Eve had spent so much time hating her dad
because the story that Cisely tells her
is that their dad made an advance on her.
But the truth is, is that Cisely made the move on her dad.
So the scene is her and Eve
trying to figure out what happened,
trying to understand what happened.
And you can tell that Cisely
doesn't even really understand what happened.
So when Eve touches her, you know, with her powers,
for lack of a better term,
she feels the moment she's able to see it in her memory
what happened and they are quietly unpacking it.
- And I still think I'm still unpacking it.
I still don't know what to truly feel about it.
I think that's the strength of it
because you know, after this moment,
they actually take this letter that was written
and they, they sink it in the lake
and then we pull it back in the, in the end, it's there,
but we know that it's just kind of the beginning
of a new trauma
that these two young girls are going to have to deal with
and unpack.
- So much of Southern Gothic work
is about the way that past trauma
affects the present family.
And so I think that the kind of the fucked-up-ness
of these like incestral feelings is tied up
in this idea of like generational hurts.
- And I feel like that's
one of the many strengths of this film.
It's like real life.
You know, you have to sit
with the complexities and contradictions
and there's no easy way out.
There's no bow tie telling you
this happened for this reason,
and this is what's going to happen because of that,
it's a very like contemplative internal mode of filmmaking
that I really enjoy.
(upbeat music)
- I think Cole from The Sixth Sense
and Eve from Eve's Bayou
are both really trying to come to terms
with this gift that they have.
It's almost like it's growing with them,
and they're discovering it in the same way
they're trying to discover themselves.
And this is an added thing that they have to contend with.
And the thing that works
for both The Sixth Sense and Eve's Bayou
is that the way the worlds are built,
it doesn't really seem abnormal that they have these things
that they're trying to make sense of.
And Eve has Mozelle, and Cole has the Bruce Willis character
to really kind of help them through
what they are experiencing.
- A major difference between Eve in Eve's Bayou
and Cole in The Sixth Sense is that there is this sense
that Eve is going to be all right.
Eve is functioning in a more like safe space,
so it allows her to be more of a child.
Whereas in The Sixth Sense, Cole
has like a sense of melancholy,
that's never really going to go away.
And for that reason,
I think that the performance
that Haley Joel Osment is giving is a much sadder one.
(upbeat music)
Does Eve's Bayou belong in the canon?
Sarah-Tai.
- Absolutely.
I think it is a quintessential film
when we're talking just about coming of age,
and it becomes even more quintessential
when we're talking about black girlhood on screen.
Especially if we're talking more specifically
about Southern black girlhood
- Absolutely agree.
This film belongs in the canon.
It's a beautiful Southern movie
that deals with Southern culture in a very authentic way.
Also just, I know this is Kasi's debut feature film.
It's just like written from the heart,
fought to get it made, fought to retain control.
We often celebrate the filmmakers
who kind of make movies with no money.
You know what I mean, in their hits.
This movie is also a hit
that was made within the studio system,
but her voice is still all up in it.
You know what I mean?
Which is a win.
And as a result, it sits on the DVD and VHS shelves
of every black family in America.
So, you know, put that thing in a canon, please.
- Thank you for watching Black Film School.
Tune in next time,
where we will continue to interrogate the canon
and suggest new films that you absolutely need to check out.