10/12/2021
A golden classic of American cinema - calibrated, precise, hitting the brain exactly where it needs to be.
Shyamalan's Eastrail 177 Trilogy is just such a case. It's a completely unusual reading of the comic book universes, in fact it's a completely separate universe of three films, and the comics are just a connecting myth here. There are absolutely tear-jerking Easter eggs, like Bruce Willis in the finale of Split, when he drops just two words - "Mr Glass" - and it draws a line under the canvas cleaner than any gory or weepy scene.
The greatness of the trilogy is realised when you watch it all, but each film individually is also a masterpiece. The timid attempts to state the concept in "Unbreakable", the stunning story of multiple personalities in "Split" and the cherry on the cake is the story of "Glass", where a completely vegetable Samuel Jackson works wonders.
The scores of all three films is very important to the reading of the trilogy. “The music for Glass was a unique challenge, because we’re making a sequel to two movies from two different generations, and one of the concomitant issues of that is that you’re talking musical styles from two different generations,” Shyamalan says. “Unbreakable was kind of an old-school Hollywood score. It’s very unusual and has a great percussion kind of movement to it. It was cutting-edge at that time, but it’s played by a 100-piece orchestra. The way we approached Split was with almost a Nine Inch Nails-y vibe. We were taking a cello sound and turning it and twisting it and bending it, and that was very cutting edge for now.”
How do you bring these two approaches to one film?
The solution was for Thordson to take the themes from UNBREAKABLE, composed by James Newton Howard, and revise them in his own style and musicality. “It came out more minimalized, very, very, simple and stripped down with kind of the tones of West,” Shyamalan says. They then used the musical themes from SPLIT that Thordson had composed for that film. He also composed new themes specific to GLASS. Finally, for flashback scenes from UNBREAKABLE, they used the original score from that film.
“It was an evolution,” Shyamalan says. “West was on the movie for a good eleven months, I think. This was a really big commitment. He moved to Philadelphia, set up his stuff at our offices and at his home in Philadelphia, and just went for it. And he has a really unusual way of approaching it.”
Through the process of Split and Glass, Thordson and Shyamalan found that they are creative kindred spirits, in a way. “Authenticity is our main objective as filmmakers, and everything you hear in the movie is practically done by West,” Shyamalan says. “It’s created by him, synthesized and moved by him in some way. It’s one man’s tastes helping me tell my story, so you’re getting these very strong, bold moves.”
