Elijah Price is born with osteogenesis imperfecta, which gives him extremely brittle bones which break easily – so easily, in fact, that the kids at school tease him with the name “Mr. Glass.” His mother helps him to overcome his fear of interaction with other kids by buying him comic books, thus introducing him to a world that will come to define his entire life.

We are first introduced to David Dunn as he unsuccessfully attempts to hit on a woman even though he is married. Clearly, there are marital issues in his life, and we will soon discover that his train ride had been for the purpose of finding a job in New York – he is intending to leave his wife and young son. We will also find out, however, that at one time David was very much in love with his wife – he gave up a promising football career in order to be with her.

 David is the only survivor of a train wreck – not only has he survived, but there is not a single scratch on him. Elijah, hearing of this, contacts David and presents him with his theory – that, just as in comic books, there are people who have powers that extend beyond the natural. Since Elijah sees that he himself is extraordinarily weak and brittle, he theorizes that perhaps there is someone who is extraordinarily strong, someone who can’t get hurt. He thinks that he may have found that person in David.

David doesn’t want to believe it, but his son Joseph does. His son is desperate to see his dad as a hero – clearly his dad is the most important person in his life. At one point, he decides to work out with his dad instead of playing football with his friends, and this is just after he tried to convince his friends that his dad was an amazing football player.

David slowly begins to realize that Elijah may be right. He has never been sick, and he discovers that he is extremely strong. Further, we learn that David was not actually injured at all in the car accident back in college – he had simply pretended to be injured in order to have an excuse to leave football for Audrey. Not only that, but he had actually torn the door off the car to save her – further proof that he seems to have strange abilities.

However, he remembers that he almost drowned as a child. Elijah suggests that this proves David’s weakness to be water. Elijah recommends to David that he “go where people are” and that he will discover what he needs to do. David does so, and discovers that he is able to discern when people have done bad things simply by touching them. In this way, he discovers that one man has kidnapped a family and is keeping them in their house.

David goes to the house and releases the children who are being held captive. The kidnapper manages to knock David into the swimming pool, but he is rescued just in time by the children. Returning to the house, David defeats the kidnapper. The next day, the papers are full of the news of the mysterious man who saved the children. David’s son can now honestly see his dad as an actual superhero. Further, David’s marriage has now improved – he is able to reconnect with his wife, and he no longer feels sad when he wakes up in the morning.

In the final scene of the movie, David attends Elijah’s comic book art exhibition. Here, for the first time, he touches Elijah’s hand – and discovers that Elijah was not only responsible for the train wreck, but also for two other major disasters that killed hundreds of people. Elijah had been searching his whole life for the man who could not be hurt, and had been killing people in order to do it. Elijah triumphantly tells David that he should have known all along because of what the children called him – “Mr. Glass” – a name fitting for a villain. Elijah has been the villain, the arch-enemy of David, just like in comic books – Elijah tells David that you can always tell who the villain is because he is the exact opposite of the hero. Shocked and horrified by this revelation, David turns Elijah in to the police.

Analysis

One of the major themes of the movie is that of finding one’s proper place in the world, or, in Christian terms, vocation. Both Elijah and David are uncertain of their place in the world, and the movie is about their search for and discovery of their role.

David wakes up unhappy every morning. His marriage is falling apart, and he sees himself as a failure. Elijah correctly points out to David that this is because David does not know his role in life, and this is a very sad thing. Elijah tells David that the worst thing in the world is not knowing your place in life. This is precisely why everything in David’s life is falling apart – because he has not discovered what he has been put in this world to do. He doesn’t know his purpose, what the meaning of his life is.

However, David is fundamentally a good person. He gave up a football career out of love for Audrey. He has gone into a profession in which he works to protect people. Clearly, at bottom, he is a man who has the ability to give himself to others. But because he has not yet found his purpose, his vocation, he is unable to find out the best way to do this.

It is only when he discovers his reason for existing that the rest of his life can be put back together. His role is to be a protector of the innocent – a real-life superhero. It is only once he embraces this role that he is able to save his marriage and become again the proper father to his son. The crucial insight of the movie is that we are not given life simply to do what we want, to work, eat, sleep, and then eventually die. We are all here for a reason, for a purpose, and it is only by seeking out and finding that purpose, and then embracing it, that we can become the people we were meant to be and thus find happiness.

This movie is also about being a man. Real manliness is not being able to lift a ton of weights, or beat up the bad guys, or anything like that – no, being a real man means caring for other people. At the beginning of the movie, David is not a very manly man. He is not a good husband or father – notice how our very first meeting with him shows him slipping off his wedding ring to try and commit adultery. But once he embraces his purpose as a man who is supposed to be always helping others, he becomes able to think more about his wife and his son. He becomes a real man by becoming dedicated to helping other people. His physical strength thus becomes a symbol of his moral strength.

Connected with this is the role of fatherhood. David is not as attentive to his son as he should be. When speaking to the school principal, he comments that he doesn’t usually deal with “Joseph stuff” – it is his wife who does that. David is out of touch with his son. However, Joseph is yearning for his dad to be a hero – he would rather spend time with him than with his friends; he desperately wants to believe Elijah’s theory about David’s powers, and he is overwhelmed with emotion when he discovers that his dad really is a superhero, a man whose life is dedicated to helping other people.

We can also see that Elijah is searching for the purpose of his life. However, remember that, in a comic book, we can always tell who the villain is because he is the exact opposite of the hero. Elijah is the exact opposite of David – his focus is entirely on himself rather than on other people. He thinks that he has the right to seek meaning in his life by killing people – his whole purpose in finding David is selfish. He is terrified by the lack of meaning in his life, and so he destroys other people in an attempt to find himself. As a result, he becomes less than a man – he is evil.

His physical weakness thus becomes a symbol of his moral weakness – he is not a good man, but is morally weak and depraved. He has no capacity to care about other people, although on the surface he seems to be a good man.

Questions

1. What does this movie tell us about what it means to be a man? Do you think David is manly because of his superpowers? Or is there something deeper going on?

2. Think about what the movie has to say about purpose and vocation. Is it correct to call David’s role as a superhero a “vocation”? Why or why not? Even if not, what can the movie tell us about the importance of vocation and purpose in our lives?

3. Does this movie have anything to say about love? Love between a husband and wife? Between a father and son? What about fraternal love?

4. Consider the following words from Pope Benedict. He tells us that human beings “are so constructed that we must find meaning if we are to live at all.” He also says that “meaning […] is closely related to […] joy.” What do you think this means? And how does it connect to Unbreakable?

Unbreakable. (2000). The Movie Database (TMDb). https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/974-unbreakable