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myth that M. Night Shyamalan is the new Alfred
Hitchcock or even the old one is something that
the director himself seems eager to cultivate. It
reminds me of the publicity sponsored by Brian De
Palma around the time of "Dressed to
Kill" appointing himself heir to the throne
of Hitchcock and labeling himself the "master
of the macabre". As time wore on, the label
proved to be an albatross around De Palma's neck
and is one of the major reasons why I believe this
truly great filmmaker is not more respected in
this country. When "Saturday Night Live"
targets your perceived pretension with a trailer
parody called Brian De Palma's "The
Clams", it's time to re-evaluate your image.
It's this obsession with
personal image that has led Shyamalan down a very
strange path. His increasingly large cameos in his
own films, American Express commercials, and that
absurd Sci-Fi channel documentary, "The
Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan" have all
contributed towards the creation of an image less
like Alfred Hitchcock and more like William
Castle: a master not of suspense or storytelling,
but rather of gimmicks and carnival barking.
Moreover, all of this arm waving and tap dancing
has done nothing for the work itself. With all of
the hype and "mystique", Shyamalan seems
to be demonstrating nothing more than the law of
diminishing returns, both artistically and
financially. What began as a specific style well
applied to a specific story in "The Sixth
Sense" became the model for a series of
increasingly self conscious and self aggrandizing
arty thrillers which seemed to be focused on
decreasing logic while increasing the font size of
the director's on-screen credit.
"Lady in the Water"
is Shyamalan's attempt to wind back the clock to
the days before the release of "Unbreakable",
when Shyamalan felt like he was in control of his
work and could mix the needs of the box office and
his audience's expectations with themes and ideas
that interested him. "Lady" is the tale
of a "Madame Narf" (Bryce Dallas Howard)
who is sent on a mission from the Blue World to
inspire a human whose book will one day save the
world. A gallery of mythic healers, symbolists and
guardians are then needed to protect her from the
villainous "Scrunts" and return her
safely to the Blue World in the claws of a giant
eagle called the "Great Eatlon".
What worked in
"Unbreakable" dies a slow, painful death
onscreen in "Lady in the Water".
Shyamalan is so concerned with getting across the
"brilliant" concept that he is telling a
story that is really about the very nature of
storytelling centering on a character actually
named "Story", that he forgets to
actually write a screenplay with characters and
motivations that will involve the audience.
"Unbreakable" was also concerned with
this kind of metafiction, but it allowed the
audience to work that out for themselves while we
were sinking into the story of a man who learns he
has powers above and beyond that of common men.
Shyamalan worked hard in that film not to strain
credulity and to allow us to suspend our
disbelief. He doesn't even begin to create that
suspension here.
What is most annoying about
"Lady in the Water" is that no one, not
for one second, ever considers the possibility
that nothing magical is actually occurring. What's
most troubling is that the material is right there
for a better movie, and it's hard to imagine that
Shyamalan didn't see it himself. The film starts
out silly and just gets sillier. A couple of film
reels later, you begin to laugh every time you
hear about a "narf","scrunt"
or a "tartutic". What's even more
outrageous is that Shyamalan tries to pass this
absurd stuff off as some kind of old Korean
legend, which it is not. It comes completely from
the depths of his own mind.
However, Shyamalan has cast
the film well. Paul Giamatti plays the building
manager of The Cove, the gray apartment block
setting that is the single location of "Lady
in the Water". Giamatti is unfortunately
given the unlikely name of Cleveland Heep, which
puts thoughts in the mind that Shyamalan was
thinking of a more Spielberg kind of
entertainment, perhaps titled, "Cleveland
Heep and the Lady in the Water". Regardless
of the oddball name and wooden dialogue, Giamatti
gives another excellent performance, this time in
a lead role which requires him to do the heavy
lifting. He carries the movie effortlessly and
will hopefully get more chances in the future to
demonstrate the real sincerity and humble heroic
nature he showcases here.
Bryce Dallas Howard has less
to do as the cryptic title character, but her pale
features and soft voice make her perfect for the
role. Everyone else, from Jeffrey Wright to Mary
Beth Hurt and Jared Harris, is totally wasted on
roles that in many cases are much smaller than
that of "Vick", the visionary writer
whose ideas will one day inspire the world, a role
played by the director himself, whose very
presence onscreen throws you out of the story.
Imagine Alfred Hitchcock playing the role of
Detective Arbogast in "Psycho". You
wouldn't be able to watch the movie. Every time he
appeared, the audience would giggle and leave the
movie's reality behind. For a director so
obviously concerned with his image in the real
world, playing a messianic character in his own
movie is the worst choice possible.
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