Haggisboy
25-07-2006, 01:28 AM
I wonder if, after taking in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Lady in the Water, Haley Joel Osment’s character from The Sixth Sense might be inclined to say “I see lousy films, and one of them is in this theatre.”
Actually, calling The Lady in the Water “lousy” is too simplistic. The movie is more of a train wreck, with partially realized elements, loose ends aplenty, and wildly improbable leaps in its own narrative. And yet, in true Shyamalan fashion, the movie commands viewer respect in spite of its flaws.
Shyamalan credits the movie’s plot to a bedtime story he created to entertain his children, but instead of conveying a simple story, the tale unfolds as a muddled new age fable that never really goes anywhere or accomplishes anything.
The movie’s greatest strength is the casting of Paul Giamatti as Cleveland Heep, the stuttering schlep caretaker of a Philadelphia apartment complex known as The Cove. Giamatti’s everyman quality makes it easy for the viewer to quickly get sucked into the story, which involves Heep’s discovery of a mysterious woman (Bryce Dallas Howard) one night in the complex’s pool. Turns out this “Narf”, or water nymph, has been sent from the “blue world” to the world of men to impart some sort of mystical knowledge that the film never makes very clear. Trying their best to kill her before she fulfills her mission are shadowy, supernatural “Scrunts”, large hyena-like creatures comprised of grass and earth.
Sounds strange? Watching the film doesn’t help as Shyamalan never bothers to explain why the Scrunts are out to kill his heroine, much less the grand importance of her mission.
In the decade that’s passed since Shymalan burst onto the scene with his brilliant The Sixth Sense, the director has cultivated an equally proportioned number of fans and detractors. Few movie directors have been able to so totally polarize movie going audiences into love him or hate him camps as Shymalan. A lot of this has to do with his penchant for building his movies around plot twist devices that fans either love, or find hackneyed.
As if listening to his critics, Shymalan has eschewed his traditional plot twist this time out in favor of a more conventional narrative, albeit one that more closely resembles a phone conversation with a really bad connection. The whole experience actually left me wishing for a twist that would turn the movie on its head and make me feel like everything I’d spent the last two hours watching was much more than the sum of its ambiguous parts.
Still, for all its numerous flaws, The Lady in the Water is still a compelling film. Shymalan’s talent for imagery, characterization and musical scoring all give this movie a watchable dimension. I also have to admire him for his vision, for unlike many of his directorial contemporaries, he hasn’t opted to “sell out” and cash in by helming any one of Hollywood’s countless superhero action adventure popcorn movies that fill the cinemas each summer. He has a vision and stands by it, even unto failure. There’s something to be admired in that.
Actually, calling The Lady in the Water “lousy” is too simplistic. The movie is more of a train wreck, with partially realized elements, loose ends aplenty, and wildly improbable leaps in its own narrative. And yet, in true Shyamalan fashion, the movie commands viewer respect in spite of its flaws.
Shyamalan credits the movie’s plot to a bedtime story he created to entertain his children, but instead of conveying a simple story, the tale unfolds as a muddled new age fable that never really goes anywhere or accomplishes anything.
The movie’s greatest strength is the casting of Paul Giamatti as Cleveland Heep, the stuttering schlep caretaker of a Philadelphia apartment complex known as The Cove. Giamatti’s everyman quality makes it easy for the viewer to quickly get sucked into the story, which involves Heep’s discovery of a mysterious woman (Bryce Dallas Howard) one night in the complex’s pool. Turns out this “Narf”, or water nymph, has been sent from the “blue world” to the world of men to impart some sort of mystical knowledge that the film never makes very clear. Trying their best to kill her before she fulfills her mission are shadowy, supernatural “Scrunts”, large hyena-like creatures comprised of grass and earth.
Sounds strange? Watching the film doesn’t help as Shyamalan never bothers to explain why the Scrunts are out to kill his heroine, much less the grand importance of her mission.
In the decade that’s passed since Shymalan burst onto the scene with his brilliant The Sixth Sense, the director has cultivated an equally proportioned number of fans and detractors. Few movie directors have been able to so totally polarize movie going audiences into love him or hate him camps as Shymalan. A lot of this has to do with his penchant for building his movies around plot twist devices that fans either love, or find hackneyed.
As if listening to his critics, Shymalan has eschewed his traditional plot twist this time out in favor of a more conventional narrative, albeit one that more closely resembles a phone conversation with a really bad connection. The whole experience actually left me wishing for a twist that would turn the movie on its head and make me feel like everything I’d spent the last two hours watching was much more than the sum of its ambiguous parts.
Still, for all its numerous flaws, The Lady in the Water is still a compelling film. Shymalan’s talent for imagery, characterization and musical scoring all give this movie a watchable dimension. I also have to admire him for his vision, for unlike many of his directorial contemporaries, he hasn’t opted to “sell out” and cash in by helming any one of Hollywood’s countless superhero action adventure popcorn movies that fill the cinemas each summer. He has a vision and stands by it, even unto failure. There’s something to be admired in that.