M. Night Shyamalan has been on a bit of a slide of late. After his fantastic The Sixth Sense and even better Unbreakable, he has hit a bit of a rut. Signs was good, but not great, and The Village was a big disappointment. Even with the downward slope his movies have been on of late, I still wanted to believe that the slide would stop here. The trailers looked good, I like Paul Giamatti, and Bryce Dallas Howard gave an incredible performace in that bomb that was The Village. With those things going for it, I had some cautiously guarded hopes. Unfortunately the stink seeped through the door and I was faced with yet another disappointing film.
As I walked out of the theater, one word kept repeating itself over and over in my head. That word was "pretentious." Perhaps a better way of putting it is "trying too hard." It is almost as if Shyamalan picks the twist or the high concept and then tries to build everything else around it; it doesn't get boiled down to its essence. The past couple of movies lack any type of organic development — rather the development is much more mechanical, pieces of a puzzle fitting together rather than the melding of words.
Lady in the Water tells the story of the attempted reconnect between the people living above the water with the people living below. It seems that the story of the inhabitants of this so-called Blue World and their attempts to rejoin the relationship with humans has become the stuff of legend, including what seems to be a very well detailed bedtime story.
The central character of this tale is Cleveland Heep, played by Paul Giamatti. He is the superintendant of an apartment building called The Cove. He is a quiet, agreeable man who is just making a living. The tenants of the building are a wide array of people, with vastly different personalities. By the end of the movie, this disparate group of people will be called together to work towards something that is greater than their own lives.
The structure of the movie is maddening, it is kind of like an old role playing game. You know the kind of game, where you get so far and then have to return somewhere to get some more exposition on the next step, and you have to repeat this over and over. Heep learns something and then goes back to the one person familiar with the story to find out the next part so that he can get to the next level, and so on and so forth. He goes around to everyone in the building, filling them in on their roles, so that everyone can be involved.
Article comments
1 - RJ Elliott
Well-written review!
I guess my main complaint (from the "suspension of disbelief" desk) was that so many people in this movie were so gladly willing to involve themselves in something so bizarre. (I mean, narfs? Scrunts? If I was a tenant there, I'd be all like, WTF?)
However, I disagree with the idea that this movie was somehow shallow WRT a deeper meaning. I was able to see plenty of deep sub-text (the former doctor is discovered to be "the healer" and is able to heal the narf only after finally publicly venting about the loss of his loved ones, and thereby also healing himself in a way...the movie critic who whines about how all movies are unoriginal, and then gets unexpectedly [to him] eaten by the scrunt...etc.), and I found a lot of it rather touching.
I honestly wouldn't recommend it to most people, because most people do not enjoy this type of film. But I did enjoy it, warts and all.