Lady in the Water
Review by Fritz Esker
Before I get into the review, I'd just like to give belated best wishes to two writers whose work I've been a fan of for a long time: the Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert and ESPN's Peter Gammons. Both are recovering and doing well after some serious health problems and here's hoping they make a full recovery and are back writing soon.
After one film that received a Best Picture nomination (The Sixth Sense) and two others that were mostly well-received (Unbreakable and Signs), M. Night Shyamalan suffered a backlash with 2004's The Village. While it is not a movie I would recommend, there is still a lot to like about the film. Visually, it is Shyamalan's best work and it seems light years away from the relatively drab visuals utilized in the otherwise excellent The Sixth Sense. Furthermore, The Village features some powerful, relevant messages about governing through fear and the futility of people trying to run from grief and sorrow. Despite being saddled with some stilted lines, the acting is top-notch. However, all of this falls apart because one of the most ludicrous final plot twists in recent memory.
A good or great final plot twist can make everything that preceded it in the movie seem better, just like in The Sixth Sense. That film's final revelation was everything a great twist should be. It caught most audience members completely off guard, yet made sense in retrospect and left viewers wondering how they didn't pick up on it during their first viewing. The Village, on the other hand, features the exact opposite: a twist that makes no sense on first viewing and makes even less sense the more thought is devoted to it. It is phony and forced and completely undermines a film that had a lot going for it. On top of that, Shyamalan already had one twist about 2/3 of the way through The Village that actually was effective.
Despite the fact that it is ultimately a frustrating film, The Village was still a movie that was obviously the work of a talented filmmaker, albeit one who made a disastrously bad choice for his film's ending. The increased visual prowess he showed throughout and his new willingness to tackle interesting and provocative themes still left viewers reason to look forward to his next work.
Sadly, Lady in the Water is one of the year's worst films. At times, it is jaw-droppingly awful. It tells the story of Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), the super of an apartment building that finds its pool inhabitated by a "narf" (Bryce Dallas Howard). The narf has some vague sort of mystical knowledge that will dramatically assist mankind. However, she can only pass on this knowledge if she can avoid being eaten by a "scrunt," a wolf-like creature.
The film's biggest and most obvious flaw is that is violates the most basic principle of filmmaking: "show, don't tell." Lady in the Water features perhaps the highest amount of expository dialogue in any film ever created. Most of the film seems to consist of characters explaining things to each other. Even after these explanations take place, things still don't really make sense. The rules Shyamalan sets up for his fairy tale are at once convoluted and almost shockingly arbitrary, like the whole thing was thought up of one day on the set. In fact, Lady in the Water would be a good film to showcase in any beginning screenwriting class as a primer on the dangers of telling, as opposed to showing.
The script's failure ends up stranding a cast of talented actors. Giamatti gave the best male performance of 2004 in Sideways and received a deserved Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work in Cinderella Man. Not surprisingly, in the one scene where he is actually allowed to emote as opposed to listen to or deliver exposition, he is outstanding. Bryce Dallas Howard proved herself to be an actress to watch in The Village, delivering a charismatic performance despite being saddled with some awkward dialogue. Here, she is stuck with a vague, poorly defined character and left with virtually nothing to play. Similarly wasted is the usually terrific Jeffrey Wright (Angels in America, Broken Flowers).
In his script, Shyamalan has placed a defense mechanism against the criticism that is sure to accompany this film. One of the apartment dwellers (Bob Balaban) is a movie critic. The critic is the one human character in the film who is meant to be viewed as completely unlikable. Honestly, I don't have a problem with a critic character being played as a jerk. In the two years I've worked as a critic, I've certainly met critics who were arrogant jackasses. I think I can safely say, however, that if confronted by a snarling wolf-like creature, even the most socially retarded critic would not then launch into a monologue about film cliches. He would probably either freeze in stunned silence, try to run away as fast as he can, or wet himself.
While no one other than Shyamalan can be sure of his intentions, the device seems like an effort to protect Lady in the Water from criticism (by saying "Oh, critics just didn't like it because there was a mean critic in it") and allow him to get back at the people who panned The Village. Taken with another character in the film, this device seems even more self-indulgent. While Shyamalan has always been fond of giving himself cameos in his films (a la Hitchcock), he gives himself a major role in Lady in the Water. He casts himself as a visionary writer whose words will change the world, but who will eventually be martyred for speaking those words. To write such a role and cast oneself in it just screams of rampant egotism and to think it would not come off that way is disingenuous at best. The self-casting makes the martyrdom angle particularly galling. It makes it seem like he views himself as a victim, a man whose work could make the world a more harmonious place, even if it results in his martyrdom at the hand of dastardly critics out to denigrate his words.
All of this is a shame. Shymalan is a gifted filmmaker and a skilled writer, albeit one who seems to have lost his way. I would love to see him wow audiences again like he has in the past. To do so, however, he needs to be able to take a long look at his work and be able to accept criticism about it. Doing so is easier said than done. No one likes rejection. I love creative writing and I've had people hate stuff I've written. I make a living as a freelance journalist and have had articles I've spent a lot of time and effort on get scrapped for various reasons. It is neither easy nor fun. But, in many cases, the criticism makes one a better writer. Hopefully, Shymalan will be able to shake off the sting of the harsh words he is almost certain to get for this and use them constructively and come back stronger than ever.