Glass Act

James McAvoy’s screen portrayal of multiple personalities is energetic but not the real thing.

- Marc Wilson

I have a confession. I’ve enjoyed all of M Night Shyamalan’s movies (apart from The Happening, which was just silly).

The latest is Glass. Without giving anything away that isn’t in the trailer, the film brings together characters from two previous movies, Unbreakable and Split. Both of those have psychological elements, with the theme that “superpowers” of the comic-book kind may be a kind of self-generated placebo effect: we may be super-strong, or particularly vulnerable to water, because we believe it’s true.

Glass has had a mixed reception, but James McAvoy’s performance as Kevin Crumb has won general approval. He steals both Glass and Split. In both, McAvoy’s body is home to numerous personalities, both male and female, aged nine and up, and McAvoy gives all of them everything he’s got.

The notion of multiple personalities has a long history, recently characterised by controversy. Case studies apparently date back about 500 years, and long before that, the phenomenon may have been known as possession.