UNBREAKABLE

Everyone knows Unbreakable is a bad movie. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some dynamite mise-en-scene. Specifically, the films use of color. Basically, the movie assigns three different colors to three different teams/kinds of characters.
The protagonist and his family are usually seen in green. While on patrol as a security guard, he wears a green poncho. His family, whenever shown, is in green always. The characters seem completely unaware that they only wear green and it is never actually addressed in the film. The protagonist’s truck is green etc. In the movie green usually is associated with life and living, and good in a general sense.
The film’s antagonist dons purple. Every time we see him he’s wearing it. His mother also wears purple. The color seems to represent knowledge and power. It’s often attributed to comic book super-villains like the Joker and Lex Luthor. Quite appropriate since essentially this is a superhero movie.
Lastly, there’s Orange/Yellow. The protagonist sees a man wearing yellow who he assumes to be a criminal packing heat. Later the man is shown to have had a gun on him. Yellow basically represents everything evil. The best example of this is when the protagonist fights a criminal in an orange jump suit. Several times, the hero in green is either tempted or swayed by yellow. It might also tie to corruption.
And those are the many colors of unbreakable. I guess I could go into why the protagonist is white and the antagonist and other foes in the film (including one played by the director) are black or some other minority, but hopefully there’s really no symbolism behind it. Maybe M Night Shyamalan just loves white people!

BY SAM FRIEDMAN