M. Night Shyamalan is an artist like any other. There are a lot of potent ideas and whims of fancy bouncing around inside his inarguably creative mind. He is, in all likelihood, just as his representation in the American Express commercial, discovering vibrant new details worthy of expansion at every step of the way.
However, as a filmmaker, Shyamalan has never found the appropriate balance for fully realizing his themes and notions. For all of the discussions he wishes to have with his audience, for all his attempts to represent each of them completely, the insularity of his concepts gets the better of him every time out. Such is the case with “Lady in the Water,” a film far less deserving of the inevitable wave of detest coming its way, whatever level of failure it may exist upon.
In the film, Paul Giamatti plays Cleveland Heep, a man lost in his own sorrows and retreating to the far reaches of an anonymous apartment complex in Philadelphia. As superintendent, Cleveland has carved out a position of semi-importance and purpose, but one easily filled by anyone, as he well knows.
That would be, in Cleveland’s mind, the point –- the more invisible his existence the better. Why that is, we are left only to imagine for a while, but we discover the tangibility of Cleveland’s discontent in due time.
The complex itself is filled with an assortment of colorful characters, from the raucous and inebriated band, to the unnecessarily unique father specializing in crossword puzzles, to the former author and current animal-loving old lady, to the Asian mother and her wacky/sexy daughter. Then there is the scientifically driven young man committed to working out only the right side of his body, the Latin family fit with five daughters…oh, and let us not forget the disenchanted and wonderfully cynical film critic, truly obvious in its purpose as a character.
The writer/director himself, of course, turns up in the film, in a much more layered role than he has filled in the past, proving that sometimes he just might be a better actor than he is a writer.
Late one night, Cleveland discovers a girl swimming past curfew in the swimming pool of the complex. After a routine slip-and-fall on the deck, Cleveland is rescued, as it would seem, by the mysterious girl. He is then left to wonder who this odd, comfortably naked and somewhat aloof individual is. We learn this information through the (at first glance) woefully expository story from the Asian firecracker, a story held amusingly out of context for much of the film.
However, critiquing the story of “Lady in the Water” from this point forward in any traditional sense would be a drastic mistake. It is at this moment – discovering the girl is a sea nymph named Story hailing from The Blue World – that you truly have to let yourself be taken with the fantasy of it all if you are to derive any enjoyment in the matter.
And that statement reads much more typically than it should.
The point is there are elements at work here that command a literal release of the plot. You really and truly must reduce yourself to childhood. No one would look for sensible justification in a big, bad wolf dressing in a grandmother’s night gown, but there are lessons there to be learned all the same.
Fortunately, the above-mentioned humor is a tool Shyamalan uses quite well to keep the balance on the ludicrous nature of this yarn. It isn’t lost on him that his story is terribly contrived, even for a “bedtime story.” But it isn’t the plot he is interested in here, so much as the characters. In this fashion, “Lady in the Water” is perhaps the first true character study of Shyamalan’s career.
The film is not merely about finding one’s place in the world. It is about having the courage to face that place, and assuredly, much as with “Signs,” the filmmaker uses this opportunity to speak to fate and faith throughout. Cleveland is a man with a painful past, one that he believes will abandon him if he abandons it. But such considerations are inherently foolish. We are not only sculpted by our past, we are owned by it. We are owned by it until we sum up the fortitude to accept it, and through a fantastical, absolutely incoherent fable, Shyamalan makes this point clearly.
What will certainly be lost in the shuffle of criticism of is the conviction and passion that is more apparent here than in past efforts from the director, efforts that were drastically obvious attempts at capitalizing on that fated moniker “The Next Spielberg.” It will be more fun in our typically lazy analytical film community to draw blood. Ironically enough, most points of negative concern will be viable. But they will be defeatist all the same.
Paul Giamatti truly is a saving grace here in many respects. As a stuttering, introverted and simple man, Cleveland is a curious anchor for such a story. However, dazzling as always, Giamatti sells his side of things like a champ. Conversely, the rest of the cast is filled out on the page in an extremely flat manner, all of them serving a pre-ordained purpose in the story. But Cleveland is a complex and interesting character whose ins and outs deserved the right attention.
As the mysterious Story, Bryce Dallas Howard is appropriately creepy, and, I guess, appropriately detached. However, I don’t know how one would begin to critique a performance like this. When you get right down to it, it’s all external – every bit of it.
Jeffrey Wright, Bob Balaban, Bill Irwin, Freddy Rodriguez and Sarita Choudhury fill out the rest of the principle supporting cast, elementarily conceived characters on the whole, but organic to the tale all the same. And, in most cases, the actors do a fine job of elevating their roles ever-so-slightly.
The problem with “Lady in the Water” is a rather significant one, though. Tonally, it is even. Thematically, it could use some work, but the elements are there and coherent. Performances are as good as they were going to get. The filmmaking is, as always with Shyamalan, top notch. He remains visually dynamic as a director.
No, the problem with Shyamalan and his latest effort is the same issue he has had for six years. He cannot seem to understand that the role of the artist is not infinitely solitary. That, my friend, would be a real “bedtime story.” If you roll with something as risky as this on your own, you are bound to trip and stumble, and who will be there to catch your fall? Better yet, who should be?
Maybe that is the sort of risk Shyamalan is attracted to taking, but you can only fall so many times before you can’t help yourself up anymore. Shyamalan is getting to that point.
Ultimately, this is a filmmaker with a choice to make. With “Lady in the Water,” he has concocted, again, a string of interesting ideas that he cannot fully develop. His central theme rings true. However, there are so many particulars that threaten depth and yet remain on the periphery, it becomes apparent that Shyamalan is a director, however talented, lacking the maturity to understand that art is not a singular achievement – and a film is anything but.
It is the mark of professionalism to trim the fat. This seems to be lost on Shyamalan. Furthermore, the lessons he learned (or perhaps did not learn) on “The Village” were taken personally and manifest themselves in aspects of “Lady in the Water” in very petty ways. The lessons he has been avoiding on his latest effort already show the signs of potential insularity once again, taking to chastising a studio that had every right not to believe in a project that, however booming in potential, just wasn’t there yet.
The golden child simply hasn’t allowed the industry to break him, and his humility is nowhere to be found. That vicious cycle has produced terrible filmmaking since the dawn of cinema, and Mr. Shyamalan is dangerously close to the same precipice. Perhaps it is time for him to stop listening to the voices inside his head, and start lending credence to the voices outside.
One advantage of the hectic festival environment is that, while seeing more movies in a month than is medically advisable, it offers a pretty ruthless method of separating the wheat from the chaff. If a film still sticks in your mind after seeing a million others in such a compressed timeframe, it clearly has something special. (For me, those would be the films in my London Top Ten list.)
Jonathan Demme and Jenny Lumet’s menagerie of characterization, “Rachel Getting Married,” will have a diversity of followers.
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