the sixth sense

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

We’ve had a run of posts about movies and shows that have influenced us in the past. (Given the crowd here, they’ve mostly been creepy.) Which is timely: my kids, at 12 and 15, are just old enough that I can show them my favourite movies that live rent free in my brain. It’s great. They haven’t seen enough yet to be jaded by tropes. Everything is new and wonderful. The Sixth Sense, for instance, had them yelling “PLOT TWIST” and “no wayyyyy”. Back to the Future III, in which Doc falls in love in the Wild West but has a falling out with the lady, had my twelve year-old wail “My ship! They sunk my ship!”

It’s been educational for all of us.

*Bruce Willis having his own big reveal in M. Night Shyamalan’s best movie,* The Sixth Sense (1990)

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How do we know what we know? More importantly, how do we know anything when the supposed evidence consists of absences? Does a cat exist that we never see or hear, and all we do is fill its bowl with food and clean the litter box regularly? Is a charmer’s glib confession that in order to feel alive he burns greenhouses every couple of months enough proof to convict him of these crimes – and of worse ones? And when a loved one vanishes, is her absence proof that something horrible has happened? Does Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) make himself believe that something is there, or does he make himself forget that what he is looking for actually doesn’t exist – as with the tangerine in the pantomime his friend Hae-mi shows him?

Burning