Lady in the Water
This movie has all of the right elements, but the glue used to bind them together is bad, and they were put together incorrectly. We see some right out in front the whole time, when all we needed was a little glimpse, while whole fields of fertile thought imagery are left barren and untouched.
A summary: There exists another world, the "blue world," where nymphs reside. They used to be very close with humanity, guiding them, but humanity got materialistic and out of touch. Now they're just remembered as a bed-time story. Along with the nymphs are mystical predators, and evil-yet-just enforcers of the laws, and a host of mysterious laws and roles that humans are meant to play, but must guess at.
So, one of those essential elements that this film does have is a sense of fairy tale logic in an urban setting. Urban fantasy is increasing in popularity, though it tends to remain the realm of sensitive women writers or guys with artsy souls . . . new age folk and fans of celtic music. This film shows how it can be cool, or at least starts to. The mystical creatures (one a lovely nymph, the other a plant-covered big bad wolf) both blend right in with our normal world, looking familiar, but at the same time exude an air of being lost. The "laws older than humanity" aspect of urban fantasy is there, too . . . if you follow the rules, you'll make it out all right. But one step off the path, and you're doomed. Finally, the fluidity of those laws, their constant changing and reinterpretation, is present as well. The narrative is constantly adding new nuances to the rules we thought we knew. "But my grandmother says that SOMETIMES a scurf will break the rules," lectures a club-hopping homework-hating asian student who is the intermediary between normal life and the mysterious bed-time story that our protagonist finds himself in the midst of.
Which segueways into the next amazing element the film has, the thing that it starts with but sadly loses: great characters. From the opening scene, we feel like we're in a menagerie or a circus, with a cast of odd-but-interesting folks just waiting to reveal their secret meanings, their true purposes, their hidden skills. And as Cleveland, the protagonist who finds himself the uncertain protector of the nymph, soon learns, this story does indeed have a cast of supporting heroes, humans all, who are meant to help the lost nymph.
But then the movie falls apart. It promises to scare us . . . but it can't decide between being spooky and comic. It suggests that ordinary people can have hidden purposes and amazing skills, but it barely shows those few lucky heroes using their abilities. Instead, we simply have a series of "oops, YOU'RE not the special person in the story. How about YOU?" sequences until, just in time (and really, through luck and the process of elimination), all the right people are in all the right places, performing their "parts" in the fairy tale.
But when they do, it's anticlimactic. First of all, these heroes are chosen at random from among the swarm of minor players in the film, not via some interesting foreshadowing that clever viewers can catch (as we might have expect from a Shyamalan film), nor due to some specific action or sacrifice. So we're unimpressed with most of them from the beginning. Second, they don't so much perform their roles as stand/sit there while in one case, stuff happens around them, or in another, they vent out an emotional burden that wasn't given enough weight or poignancy in the first place. The pacing of these supposedly climactic scenes is also off, happening so late or so nearly pointlessly (e.g., saving the nymph from wounds that could easily have been avoided) that they fail to make an impact.
M. Night also suffers from a large, though admittedly tongue-in-cheek, dose of pride. He casts himself, not in a bit part as usual, but in a fairly active role. Not only that, but the character he portrays is a writer whose book changes the world . . . and one who learns that he must sacrifice himself if he is to bring about that change (the revelation of which is another emotional moment that simply doesn't work). So, the director writes himself into his script . . . as a writer who changes the world . . . AND a martyr. Uffda, as we say in Minnesota. He also succumbs to the guilty Dante-esque temptation of satirizing his critics by including a movie critic character, one who seems not-too-terrible to me. Later in the film a character tells us (which comes across as an empty accusation, as if M. Night had to write the dialogue into a character's mouth because his story didn't convey what he wanted it to) that this particular character is a cocky, self-righteous bastard who "put a girl's life in jeopardy!" How did he do that again? Oh, right, by answering our protagonist's hypothetical question regarding who might be a good "interpreter" and "guild" in a hastily described fairy tale framework. For that, obviously, he deserves to be ripped to shreds by a monster.
At one point, the protagonist is speaking with one of his tenants about tests she has to take for her university courses. If M. Night Shyamalan's films were educational materials, Sixth Sense would be like a shocking essay with a mind-blowing conclusion; the Village and Signs would be interesting and open discourses on right and wrong, or on fate and meaning; and, unfortunately, Lady in the Water would be a multiple-choice test with poorly worded questions and no way of knowing the right answers until the teacher gives you the answer sheet.
A summary: There exists another world, the "blue world," where nymphs reside. They used to be very close with humanity, guiding them, but humanity got materialistic and out of touch. Now they're just remembered as a bed-time story. Along with the nymphs are mystical predators, and evil-yet-just enforcers of the laws, and a host of mysterious laws and roles that humans are meant to play, but must guess at.
So, one of those essential elements that this film does have is a sense of fairy tale logic in an urban setting. Urban fantasy is increasing in popularity, though it tends to remain the realm of sensitive women writers or guys with artsy souls . . . new age folk and fans of celtic music. This film shows how it can be cool, or at least starts to. The mystical creatures (one a lovely nymph, the other a plant-covered big bad wolf) both blend right in with our normal world, looking familiar, but at the same time exude an air of being lost. The "laws older than humanity" aspect of urban fantasy is there, too . . . if you follow the rules, you'll make it out all right. But one step off the path, and you're doomed. Finally, the fluidity of those laws, their constant changing and reinterpretation, is present as well. The narrative is constantly adding new nuances to the rules we thought we knew. "But my grandmother says that SOMETIMES a scurf will break the rules," lectures a club-hopping homework-hating asian student who is the intermediary between normal life and the mysterious bed-time story that our protagonist finds himself in the midst of.
Which segueways into the next amazing element the film has, the thing that it starts with but sadly loses: great characters. From the opening scene, we feel like we're in a menagerie or a circus, with a cast of odd-but-interesting folks just waiting to reveal their secret meanings, their true purposes, their hidden skills. And as Cleveland, the protagonist who finds himself the uncertain protector of the nymph, soon learns, this story does indeed have a cast of supporting heroes, humans all, who are meant to help the lost nymph.
But then the movie falls apart. It promises to scare us . . . but it can't decide between being spooky and comic. It suggests that ordinary people can have hidden purposes and amazing skills, but it barely shows those few lucky heroes using their abilities. Instead, we simply have a series of "oops, YOU'RE not the special person in the story. How about YOU?" sequences until, just in time (and really, through luck and the process of elimination), all the right people are in all the right places, performing their "parts" in the fairy tale.
But when they do, it's anticlimactic. First of all, these heroes are chosen at random from among the swarm of minor players in the film, not via some interesting foreshadowing that clever viewers can catch (as we might have expect from a Shyamalan film), nor due to some specific action or sacrifice. So we're unimpressed with most of them from the beginning. Second, they don't so much perform their roles as stand/sit there while in one case, stuff happens around them, or in another, they vent out an emotional burden that wasn't given enough weight or poignancy in the first place. The pacing of these supposedly climactic scenes is also off, happening so late or so nearly pointlessly (e.g., saving the nymph from wounds that could easily have been avoided) that they fail to make an impact.
M. Night also suffers from a large, though admittedly tongue-in-cheek, dose of pride. He casts himself, not in a bit part as usual, but in a fairly active role. Not only that, but the character he portrays is a writer whose book changes the world . . . and one who learns that he must sacrifice himself if he is to bring about that change (the revelation of which is another emotional moment that simply doesn't work). So, the director writes himself into his script . . . as a writer who changes the world . . . AND a martyr. Uffda, as we say in Minnesota. He also succumbs to the guilty Dante-esque temptation of satirizing his critics by including a movie critic character, one who seems not-too-terrible to me. Later in the film a character tells us (which comes across as an empty accusation, as if M. Night had to write the dialogue into a character's mouth because his story didn't convey what he wanted it to) that this particular character is a cocky, self-righteous bastard who "put a girl's life in jeopardy!" How did he do that again? Oh, right, by answering our protagonist's hypothetical question regarding who might be a good "interpreter" and "guild" in a hastily described fairy tale framework. For that, obviously, he deserves to be ripped to shreds by a monster.
At one point, the protagonist is speaking with one of his tenants about tests she has to take for her university courses. If M. Night Shyamalan's films were educational materials, Sixth Sense would be like a shocking essay with a mind-blowing conclusion; the Village and Signs would be interesting and open discourses on right and wrong, or on fate and meaning; and, unfortunately, Lady in the Water would be a multiple-choice test with poorly worded questions and no way of knowing the right answers until the teacher gives you the answer sheet.