in defence (?) of m night shyamalan (part 2)


as for lady in the water, here's what i wrote on its release two years ago:

M. Night Shyamalan believes in magic, and he wants us to as well.

He also has an inflated sense of himself.

This is not unreasonable, given that his first major film ‘The Sixth Sense’ launched him at the turn of the millennium as a Hollywood wunderkind, capable of making thrillers so tight they were worthy of the adjective ‘Hitchcockian’, and even seared a new phrase ‘I see dead people’ onto the cultural lexicon. He followed ‘The Sixth Sense’ with another Bruce Willis-starrer, ‘Unbreakable’ – a film that captured the minds of many a Pentecostal youth leader eager to talk about the weight of spiritual vocation, a theme underlined by his next film ‘Signs’, in which the then uncontroversial Mel Gibson (oh how times have changed) played – of all things – a Lutheran pastor in the midst of a crisis of faith. He remained the critics’ (and the audience’s) darling until 2004, with the release of his post-9/11 analogy ‘The Village’, among whose many fans are myself and only one other person I can think of. It’s clear that he loves movies, and that he wants to conjure the same feeling we all used to share as children transfixed by the happenings on-screen – Magic.

And this is what he’s trying to do with ‘Lady in the Water’, a self-styled ‘bedtime story’ about a mermaid/angel hybrid called Story who arrives in an apartment complex in 2006, to warn its residents of how far humanity has strayed from the path of good. Or at least that’s what the opening titles suggest. This notion – that there is ancient wisdom that could save us, if only we would return to the Source – has obvious Christian resonances, that echo in all of Shyamalan’s other films, but the Story in this movie either loses the point, or fails to make it clear in the midst of a somewhat incoherent narrative.

To be sure, there are visual flights of fancy (shot by Christopher Doyle – Wong Kar-Wai’s photographer of choice) that entranced me, and the central performance from Paul Giamatti proves that ‘Sideways’ was not a one-off. But it’s never clear just what Shyamalan is trying to convey through his disappointed characters, and the none-too subtle repetition of television reports of how awful the world news is. Indeed, after the first hour, when I realised that the story wasn’t really the sum of its parts, I found myself feeling bored for the first time in one of his films. There are myths, there are monsters, there are quirky characters aplenty – from a body builder committed to working out one side of his body only to a film critic who meets a sticky end (Shyamalan is clearly a man to bear a grudge)…but there is no overall sense of what the film is really about, or even who it’s for. Is it about one man’s pain, or the whole society’s fear of global terror? Is it about the spiritual vacuum in our world, does it champion or does it critique the gung ho vigilantism that could be a caricature of the Bush administration? Is it merely (and maximally, for these matters are not without merit) an attempt at creating a new fairy tale?

The reason the answers to these questions remain ambivalent is that I’m not sure Shyamalan has decided who his audience is. The film is so convoluted in places, and demands so much attention that it wouldn’t be out of place in a festival of surrealism. And in that context, it might be welcomed as an at least intelligent attempt at post-modern storytelling. But if this is the case, then Shyamalan is guilty of wanting to have his arthouse cake and eat it in a multiplex. A film that is marketed as a scary fairy tale for all the family needs to be a scary fairy tale for all the family, and not a complex narrative about guilt and loss if we’re not going to feel unnecessarily confounded.

Perhaps the key to understanding ‘Lady in the Water’ is the scene in which the film critic claims to know more about the story teller’s intentions than the story teller himself. It’s obvious, and even quite amusing to see Shyamalan take his revenge on the critical family who appeared to mass ranks against him on the release of his last film. However, this attempt at being self-referential leads him to appear ultimately egotistical in the worst sense – in the final analysis, ‘Lady in the Water’ becomes a film about how Important the director thinks his work is. He even plays a character who is told of his cultural and political significance by a divine being (a plot element that would seem less egregious had he not played the character himself). This makes the film at least interesting to those of us who care about peace, justice, and what in ‘Superman Returns’ - another film with Christian resonance released this summer - was referred to as ‘all that stuff’. But it left me only with a feeling of disappointment, confusion, and the desire to sit down and have a good conversation with the director about his worldview and motives, rather than watching the film again. It still has more imagination and ambition than ‘Pirates of the Carribean’ and every other summer blockbuster put together, and perhaps we should be grateful that with ‘Lady in the Water’, Shyamalan has finally broken free of his apparent need to have a major plot twist at the movie’s climax. Next time around, let’s hope he doesn’t forget the plot in the first place.

For thoughts on 'The Happening', check in with www.thefilmtalk.com this Friday...

in defence of m night shyamalan


ok ok ok

so let's begin with the obvious point about m night shyamalan

it's popular to do him down

so much so that it's easy to forget how much 'the sixth sense' appeared as a remarkable eruption of new talent - a film that managed to get pretty much everything right. and while my mum did predict the twist about 40 minutes in, i think she's in a tiny minority. that film was an elegant piece, that defined 'thriller' as something more than just a mystery story, but one which actually engaged my emotions, and made me think about life and love. and how bruce willis can bring it to the table when he has the right material and director.

'unbreakable', the follow up, which philip french in the observer newspaper rightly described as representing the reason why shyamalan's style - more than any other contemporary director - deserves to be called 'hitchcockian', was about the inner turmoil of a superhero. it's the anti-hancock, and has more drama and reflective pathos than any of the other recent superspiderhulkxman movies you could pick.

'signs' showed signs indeed of shyamalan's possibly simplistic worldview (which seems to be a variation of 'everything happens for a reason' or something like that) , but still managed to be a terrifically entertaining 'bad things lurking outside your window' story. and - this is the key to appreciating his work - showed an increasing mastery of film grammar, camera movement, editing, and knowing how to make an audience feel something.

'the village', which has caused its fair share of arguments among friends, was almost universally denounced, although i happen to think it's a masterpiece, and i use that word very rarely. two things come to mind: this film dares to take seriously the implications of the language used around 9/11 and the 'war on terror' to propose that the consequences of political fear-mongering will ultimately include the death of your own children - and perhaps this idea is simply too horrifying to absorb; secondly, i think critics confused this film with another genre. they thought that because it was shyamalan, and because it was scary, that that made it a horror film, when actually it's one of the most moving love stories i've ever seen.

i'll get to 'lady in the water' and 'the happening' later - for now, let the record show, i think the best way to understand m night shyamalan is to think about him the way philip french used to: he is trying to make hitchcock films. whether or not he is succeeding is not the point - actually, the more interesting question, for me, is whether or not hitchcock is as profound as he is usually assumed to be.

life in a media circus

I've been traveling lately, and in various hotels and friends guest rooms, have seen more TV than usual. This sojourn away from my usual ignorance of broadcast television has provided the following dubious delights:

• Fox's "Moment of Truth" game show, which really does turn real life into a game, and has apparently bribed at least one marriage into oblivion through paying for public confessions of adultery. (I expect the show's producers might try to tell us that the show teaches something else about personal responsibility, or that's all in good fun, or that the contestants are there by their own informed volition; or we may even discover that the show has been lying to us and faking it. But here's the real moment of truth: when the host says, "some of these questions are way over my line," and yet still asks them, has he himself not become the definition of insanity?)

• CNN rampantly advertising Larry King's exclusive interview with Jesse Ventura as if his non-campaign for the presidency was almost as important as Jessica Simpson's non-engagement and non-pregnancy.

• Various entertainment clip shows dedicated to matters such as Robin Williams' divorce, and the Tom Cruise birthday party video.

• And in the past week, major news networks hysterically talking as if the sad events surrounding a Texas polygamous sect are just waiting to happen to your children; and the ridiculous and over-the-top response to Senator Obama's attempt at explaining an utterly uncontroversial reality: that being economically disenfranchised can make you feel entrenched. This is amusingly accompanied by the absurd suggestion that there has ever been a U.S. President who did not somehow arrive in the White House linked to the economic 'elite'.

Most of us would like to believe that we have come a long way since the Roman circus – where human beings killed people for our entertainment - or even the Victorian circus - where we only abused the disabled and disadvantaged. Today's circus may look like it only mocks the powerful – with the fabulously wealthy being humiliated as they emerge drunk and bloodied from a nightclub, or photographed while getting an embarrassing haircut. But I think we're kidding ourselves if we think people are not harmed by the pornography of social humiliation offered up 24/7. Amy Winehouse's visible bruises and alleged substance abuse problem, and Britney Spears' obvious mental illness are not legitimate fodder for our entertainment, no matter how economically powerful these two women may be.

To read the rest of this post on the God's Politics blog, click here.

saved by the bell



ok friends

you can rest easy.

after last week's threat-filled dilemma, i'm back to my usual self.

having feared for the very life of cinema itself, i spent almost six hours in two separate darkened rooms today, watching a brand new movie, and one that's over a quarter of a century old.

both were magnificent.

i had never seen bergman's 'fanny and alexander', so when the opportunity arose at the rather lovely duke university free screen society to see it on a nice public screen, i made plans to be there. i need to think about it for a while before i say anything else, so let this suffice: i think i saw something wonderful tonight, and imagine i feel somewhat differently about the world than bergman. the notion that you can never be free of your ghosts seems to me not to chime with reality. people make peace with the past all the time. i hope that bergman's life was less debt-ridden than his art.

and the other film, much less serious than bergman's, but nonetheless beautiful - scorsese's rolling stones' concert film 'shine a light' - an exhilirating, exuberant, often hilarious and incredibly exciting film. i was the only guy in the audience and was delighted. the sound's great, and the images are utterly cinematic - i couldn't quite figure out why this movie was restoring (some of) my faith in cinema, but then i realised that these boys are ultimately some of the world's consummate performers. they belong on a movie screen.

charlie watts is the eric morecambe of rock'n'roll, doing comedy huffs and winks at the camera, and needing to be helped down off his rostrum. mick is old enough to be your grandad but more alive than most teenagers. ronnie wood is the sniggering kid, hiding his smokes from his mum, and looking down girl's blouses. and keith - well, it's easy to lionise the guy (and demonise too), but i'll stay out of that. let's just say this: he knows he's lucky to be alive, and seems to spend most of his time in a state of stunned enjoyment. there's a moment at the end of the movie
when the music is done, and he's kneeling on the ground, holding the neck of his guitar, his eyes closed and lips pursed in an obvious prayer. in four years' time, the stones will have been together for fifty years. there's not a lot about their music that could be called socially mature, but they've been expressing truth and angst about the human heart for as long as i've been alive, and half as long again. and scorsese has made a gorgeous, thrilling film about them.

and in a weird confluence, both of the films i saw today are in some part about the same thing: the role women play in men's lives. it's been a very good day at the movies for me.