a review by Jeffrey Overstreet
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Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan; director of photography, Christopher Doyle; edited by Barbara Tulliver; music by James Newton Howard; production designer, Martin Childs; produced by Mr. Shyamalan and Sam Mercer; released by Warner Brothers Pictures.
108 minutes. Rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Violence (relatively bloodless) and some solid scares.
STARRING: Paul Giamatti (Cleveland Heep), Bryce Dallas Howard (Story), Bob Balaban (Harry Farber), Jeffrey Wright (Mr. Dury), Sarita Choudhury (Anna), Freddy Rodriguez (Reggie), Bill Irwin (Mr. Leeds), Jared Harris (Goatee Smoker) and David Ogden Stiers (narrator).
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Let’s put aside for a while the hype and hysteria regarding M. Night Shyamalan’s ego… the way he likes to talk about Bob Dylan and Michael Jordan as if he’s their big screen equivalent. Let’s turn away from the rants of those bloodthirsty critics who would like nothing better than to tear apart the film because of their dislike for the filmmaker and his reputation-crafting media hijinks.
The question for critics and general audiences alike should be — Is Lady in the Water a good movie?
And the answer is: Almost.
There are some nice ideas at work in this film that show off the director’s strengths. There is exactly one impressive performance. And one image in particular will stay with me forever. There are problems as well. But I’m not going to respond by presuming that Shyamalan is running out of ideas, or that his career is finished. Many artists go through dry spells, or stumble into bad imitations of their own work. And while this is, for me, the least of his big American movies, it isn’t even close to an occasion for derision. After all, substandard Shyamalan is still superior to the most engaging films of many familiar directors.
THE PLOT
Lady in the Water began, apparently, from bedtime stories Shyamalan told his children, but it feels more like the kind of creepy tale you’d tell at a campfire, guaranteeing that the listeners would stay up ready to jump at the first unusual noise.
It begins with the emergence of an otherworldly woman named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard). Story is a peculiar kind of sea nymph called a “narf,” who has come from her home in “the Blue World.” She arrived in a swimming pool at an apartment complex called The Cove, which is managed by a troubled, middle-aged widower named Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti). Dripping all over his couch, she announces that she has been sent to perform an important role in human history. But her quest is endangered by snarling wolf-monsters called “scrunts” that rise up from the grass to lurk around the property.
Is Heep able to help her achieve her mysterious quest? Does he even believe her outlandish claims?
It quickly becomes evident that the real story here isn’t about the sea nymph at all — it’s about this stuttering handyman. Heep’s a mess, a deeply wounded man, because, well, he’s the central character in an M. Night Shyamalan film.
Shyamalan films are always about wounded men who must be dragged kicking and screaming to confront their fears, overcome their deep wounds, and rise up to fulfill their destinies. Lady in the Water is no different. While the film’s clever marketing campaign drew our attention to the mermaid-like beauty, this is a film about Cleveland’s struggle to believe that he’s living in a fairy tale, his frantic attempt to behave responsibly within it, and his slow realization that this is all taking him back to resolve the pain of his past.
His struggle becomes our struggle. Are we willing to buy Story’s outrageous claims? Can we piece together the confounding riddles she speaks to him? It turns out that Story’s “Blue World” story is far more plausible than anything that’s about to happen in the real world of Cleveland Heep.
THE LEAD PERFORMANCES
In their rush to make a mockery of M. Night and condemn his work, some critics are failing to notice that this rather flawed film is set on the shoulders of Paul Giamatti who, with impressive stamina and spirit, carries it like a cross. He gives a fantastically funny and engaging performance, commanding our attention in this context more effectively than any other Hollywood leading man could.
And that’s a good thing because when we turn our attention elsewhere, Lady in the Water pretty much dissolves. It’s a challenging movie to sell, loaded with preposterous bedtime story inventions… the kind that tells you the storyteller is frantically making it up as he goes, concocting desperate patches to cover the holes along the way. Shyamalan seems to be testing the limits of our suspension of disbelief. But Giamatti takes this clunker and sells it as if it were the Movie of the Year, and as it is, his performance should be remembered among the best of 2006.
I wish I could praise Bryce Dallas Howard for her excellent work, but it’s surprising how little she is given to do here. In The Village, Howard played a blind girl with uncommonly beautiful eyes, and she delivered a performance of surprising subtlety. Here, again, Shyamalan uses her extraordinary gaze to excellent effect. But this time, she’s not blind — she’s catatonic. The shivering girl from “the Blue World” spends most of her time shuddering and twitching in Heep’s apartment, and while we wait and wait for her powers to be revealed or her mysteries to astonish us, it never happens. She just sits around soaking and looking scared. Instead of wanting to save her, I felt a more compelling desire to bring her a hot cup of cocoa.
THE SUPPORTING “CHARACTERS”
Story pales in comparison to the “ordinary people” all around her. The residents of The Cove represent the most colorful players that Shyamalan has ever concocted. But don’t mistake them for characters — they’re little more than caricatures. I’ve seen more fully developed individuals in Saturday Night Live skits. It’s like Shyamalan lined up his cast and announced, “Okay, you’re shallow and trendy; you’re mystical; you’re macho; and you’re obstinate.”
There’s Young-Soon (Cindy Cheung), the chatty fashion disaster who knows just enough about a certain fairy tale to shed light on the subject; her mother (June Kyoto Lu), who is a fount of convenient knowledge and a timid believer in fairy tales; a longtime resident who seems more like a fossil than a neighbor (Bill Irwin); a bevy of upsettable sisters; a weightlifter (Freddy Rodriguez) whose goals are rather, um, lopsided; a woman with a heart for animals (Mary Beth Hurt); a living room full of hazy-headed stoners (including Jared Harris); a struggling writer (guess who) and his sister (Sarita Choudhury of Mississippi Masala); and father-son team of puzzle-solvers (Geoffrey Wright and Noah Gray-Cabey).
It’s bad enough that this motley crew is so… well… extremely motley. But this is an M. Night Shyamalan film, so chances are that all of their varying characteristics will be put to good use, in just the right time, at just the right place, to save the day. And that makes things feel even more contrived.
Last — and in the storyteller’s estimation — least, there’s a snobbish film critic named Mr. Farber, played perfectly by Bob Balaban in a performance that recalls his delightfully arrogant and obstinate producer in Gosford Park.
The character might have been included as revenge against the critics who roasted The Village. Or, perhaps Shyamalan anticipated criticism and thought he could minimize the damage by making a “pre-emptive strike,” goading the audience to dismiss all critics. If so, that was a stupid thing to do. Sure, there are critics like Farber who are bone-headed, enamored of their own intellects, and bent on the destruction of anything with heart. But it’s the gesture of an arrogant and juvenile person to respond to criticism with cheap shots.
In making this move, Shyamalan will win some applause from viewers who prefer to consume films rather than contemplate them. But it reveals that he has an unfortunate disdain for the importance of criticism, re-enforcing the majority’s belief that they should swallow Hollywood products whole without listening to those who would ask them to learn discernment.
PROS AND CONS
And this film demands that we be discerning, because there is a lot to consider.
There are the themes — that people are drawn into community, given purpose, and even healed through the experience of story. That’s true and vital, the basis for great storytelling. Further, it suggests that faith is important… and it is. Courage is portrayed as a vital resource. And the story suggests that we may never know the influence of our quiet acts of love and kindness.
We should also consider the film’s technical excellence: Christopher Doyle makes the most of the cramped and tacky architecture of Cleveland’s building. (The film never leaves The Cove.) And he sends the the film off with one of the most breathtaking big screen images in recent memory. The moment brought tears to my eyes with its beauty, even as I struggled with the awkward choreography and predictability of that final scene.
We must also take into account the casting of Shyamalan himself as a gifted writer of great destiny. Sure, filmmakers often cast themselves in minor roles, and he has done so effectively in the past. Charlie Kaufman even wrote himself into a movie, but his tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating approach was endearing, not off-putting. Isn’t it painfully narcissistic to cast oneself as an artist of supreme importance whose work might save the world?
By casting himself as a super-special visionary, and portraying his critics as idiots, Shyamalan seems more concerned with elevating himself than with serving the story. We should come away from the movie thinking about how it applies to our own lives… not the director’s. It reminds me of the way in which Michael Jackson became preoccupied with boasting about himself, and bashing his critics, through his songs instead of singing anything we’d like to sing along with him. Lady in the Water is Shyamalan’s “Bad.”
And it’s a simple rule: The audience can’t sustain disbelief when they’re busy whispering “See that guy? He’s the director!” (When I saw the film, it seemed the whole audience was whispering about that. So much for being absorbed in the story.) If Shyamalan really has aspirations to change the world, the first step up that path will be to get over himself.
I have faith that Shyamalan can still direct a great film. Perhaps he needs to try directing someone else’s script. His own stories are becoming awfully similar: The troubled man overcomes his weakness through an encounter with something otherworldly. Since Unbreakable, it’s become increasingly difficult to ignore the plot holes and contrivances. Most artists have a passion for certain themes that become evident in all of their work, and Shyamalan is no exception. But his explorations are suffering from what Steven Greydanus suggests may be a self-inflicted pressure to repeat earlier success with twist endings.
Whatever the case, the surprises are forgettable this time around. The last-act jack-in-the-box jolts of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village were all revelatory because they made us reconsider the whole film with new perspective. They gave added resonance and meaning to the story. Here, the surprises seem arbitrary and incidental. They’re either predictable, and thus unsurprising, or merely convenient, which makes them unsatisfying. It seems that Shyamalan has come to confuse mysteries that lead to revelation… with puzzles that need to be solved.
Overconcerned with riddles, Shyamalan forgets all about storytelling. Just as Story herself spends most of the movie stuck in the apartment, so the narrative here never gets up and moves. The truth is that nothing much happens in Lady in the Water. Most of the film consists of people explaining things to each other. Even as he celebrates the power of myth, his own myth is so burdened with convoluted fill-in-the-blanks and multiple-choices that it feels more like a crossword than a mystery.
For those grownups like me who still enjoy imaginative, even preposterous, fairy tales, Lady in the Water has enough going for it to serve as a pleasantly entertaining summertime diversion. But mediocrity is all the more dissatisfying when it comes from someone we know is capable of much, much more. Here’s hoping that our agitated, stuttering writer stops nervously and self-consciously protecting his Story next time, and brings her out in her full glory to dazzle us as she has before.
Let’s put aside for a while the hype and hysteria regarding M. Night Shyamalan’s ego… the way he likes to talk about Bob Dylan and Michael Jordan as if he’s their big screen equivalent. Let’s turn away from the rants of those bloodthirsty critics who would like nothing better than to tear apart the film because of their dislike for the filmmaker and his reputation-crafting media hijinks.
The question for critics and general audiences alike should be – Is Lady in the Water a good movie?
And the answer is: Almost.
There are some nice ideas at work in this film that show off the director’s strengths. There is exactly one impressive performance. And one image in particular will stay with me forever. There are problems as well. But I’m not going to respond by presuming that Shyamalan is running out of ideas, or that his career is finished. Many artists go through dry spells, or stumble into bad imitations of their own work. And while this is, for me, the least of his big American movies, it isn’t even close to an occasion for derision. After all, substandard Shyamalan is still superior to the most engaging films of many familiar directors.
THE PLOT
Lady in the Water began, apparently, from bedtime stories Shyamalan told his children, but it feels more like the kind of creepy tale you’d tell at a campfire, guaranteeing that the listeners would stay up ready to jump at the first unusual noise.
It begins with the emergence of an otherworldly woman named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard). Story is a peculiar kind of sea nymph called a “narf,” who has come from her home in “the Blue World.” She arrived in a swimming pool at an apartment complex called The Cove, which is managed by a troubled, middle-aged widower named Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti). Dripping all over his couch, she announces that she has been sent to perform an important role in human history. But her quest is endangered by snarling wolf-monsters called “scrunts” that rise up from the grass to lurk around the property.
Is Heep able to help her achieve her mysterious quest? Does he even believe her outlandish claims?
It quickly becomes evident that the real story here isn’t about the sea nymph at all – it’s about this stuttering handyman. Heep’s a mess, a deeply wounded man, because, well, he’s the central character in an M. Night Shyamalan film.
Shyamalan films are always about wounded men who must be dragged kicking and screaming to confront their fears, overcome their deep wounds, and rise up to fulfill their destinies. Lady in the Water is no different. While the film’s clever marketing campaign drew our attention to the mermaid-like beauty, this is a film about Cleveland’s struggle to believe that he’s living in a fairy tale, his frantic attempt to behave responsibly within it, and his slow realization that this is all taking him back to resolve the pain of his past.
His struggle becomes our struggle. Are we willing to buy Story’s outrageous claims? Can we piece together the confounding riddles she speaks to him? It turns out that Story’s “Blue World” story is far more plausible than anything that’s about to happen in the real world of Cleveland Heep.
THE LEAD PERFORMANCES
In their rush to make a mockery of M. Night and condemn his work, some critics are failing to notice that this rather flawed film is set on the shoulders of Paul Giamatti who, with impressive stamina and spirit, carries it like a cross. He gives a fantastically funny and engaging performance, commanding our attention in this context more effectively than any other Hollywood leading man could.
And that’s a good thing because when we turn our attention elsewhere, Lady in the Water pretty much dissolves. It’s a challenging movie to sell, loaded with preposterous bedtime story inventions… the kind that tells you the storyteller is frantically making it up as he goes, concocting desperate patches to cover the holes along the way. Shyamalan seems to be testing the limits of our suspension of disbelief. But Giamatti takes this clunker and sells it as if it were the Movie of the Year, and as it is, his performance should be remembered among the best of 2006.
I wish I could praise Bryce Dallas Howard for her excellent work, but it’s surprising how little she is given to do here. In The Village, Howard played a blind girl with uncommonly beautiful eyes, and she delivered a performance of surprising subtlety. Here, again, Shyamalan uses her extraordinary gaze to excellent effect. But this time, she’s not blind – she’s catatonic. The shivering girl from “the Blue World” spends most of her time shuddering and twitching in Heep’s apartment, and while we wait and wait for her powers to be revealed or her mysteries to astonish us, it never happens. She just sits around soaking and looking scared. Instead of wanting to save her, I felt a more compelling desire to bring her a hot cup of cocoa.
THE SUPPORTING “CHARACTERS”
Story pales in comparison to the “ordinary people” all around her. The residents of The Cove represent the most colorful players that Shyamalan has ever concocted. But don’t mistake them for characters – they’re little more than caricatures. I’ve seen more fully developed individuals in Saturday Night Live skits. It’s like Shyamalan lined up his cast and announced, “Okay, you’re shallow and trendy; you’re mystical; you’re macho; and you’re obstinate.”
There’s Young-Soon (Cindy Cheung), the chatty fashion disaster who knows just enough about a certain fairy tale to shed light on the subject; her mother (June Kyoto Lu), who is a fount of convenient knowledge and a timid believer in fairy tales; a longtime resident who seems more like a fossil than a neighbor (Bill Irwin); a bevy of upsettable sisters; a weightlifter (Freddy Rodriguez) whose goals are rather, um, lopsided; a woman with a heart for animals (Mary Beth Hurt); a living room full of hazy-headed stoners (including Jared Harris); a struggling writer (guess who) and his sister (Sarita Choudhury of Mississippi Masala); and father-son team of puzzle-solvers (Geoffrey Wright and Noah Gray-Cabey).
It’s bad enough that this motley crew is so… well… extremely motley. But this is an M. Night Shyamalan film, so chances are that all of their varying characteristics will be put to good use, in just the right time, at just the right place, to save the day. And that makes things feel even more contrived.
Last – and in the storyteller’s estimation – least, there’s a snobbish film critic named Mr. Farber, played perfectly by Bob Balaban in a performance that recalls his delightfully arrogant and obstinate producer in Gosford Park.
The character might have been included as revenge against the critics who roasted The Village. Or, perhaps Shyamalan anticipated criticism and thought he could minimize the damage by making a “pre-emptive strike,” goading the audience to dismiss all critics. If so, that was a stupid thing to do. Sure, there are critics like Farber who are bone-headed, enamored of their own intellects, and bent on the destruction of anything with heart. But it’s the gesture of an arrogant and juvenile person to respond to criticism with cheap shots.
In making this move, Shyamalan will win some applause from viewers who prefer to consume films rather than contemplate them. But it reveals that he has an unfortunate disdain for the importance of criticism, re-enforcing the majority’s belief that they should swallow Hollywood products whole without listening to those who would ask them to learn discernment.
PROS AND CONS
And this film demands that we be discerning, because there is a lot to consider.
There are the themes – that people are drawn into community, given purpose, and even healed through the experience of story. That’s true and vital, the basis for great storytelling. Further, it suggests that faith is important… and it is. Courage is portrayed as a vital resource. And the story suggests that we may never know the influence of our quiet acts of love and kindness.
We should also consider the film’s technical excellence: Christopher Doyle makes the most of the cramped and tacky architecture of Cleveland’s building. (The film never leaves The Cove.) And he sends the the film off with one of the most breathtaking big screen images in recent memory. The moment brought tears to my eyes with its beauty, even as I struggled with the awkward choreography and predictability of that final scene.
We must also take into account the casting of Shyamalan himself as a gifted writer of great destiny. Sure, filmmakers often cast themselves in minor roles, and he has done so effectively in the past. Charlie Kaufman even wrote himself into a movie, but his tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating approach was endearing, not off-putting. Isn’t it painfully narcissistic to cast oneself as an artist of supreme importance whose work might save the world?
By casting himself as a super-special visionary, and portraying his critics as idiots, Shyamalan seems more concerned with elevating himself than with serving the story. We should come away from the movie thinking about how it applies to our own lives… not the director’s. It reminds me of the way in which Michael Jackson became preoccupied with boasting about himself, and bashing his critics, through his songs instead of singing anything we’d like to sing along with him. Lady in the Water is Shyamalan’s “Bad.”
And it’s a simple rule: The audience can’t sustain disbelief when they’re busy whispering “See that guy? He’s the director!” (When I saw the film, it seemed the whole audience was whispering about that. So much for being absorbed in the story.) If Shyamalan really has aspirations to change the world, the first step up that path will be to get over himself.
I have faith that Shyamalan can still direct a great film. Perhaps he needs to try directing someone else’s script. His own stories are becoming awfully similar: The troubled man overcomes his weakness through an encounter with something otherworldly. Since Unbreakable, it’s become increasingly difficult to ignore the plot holes and contrivances. Most artists have a passion for certain themes that become evident in all of their work, and Shyamalan is no exception. But his explorations are suffering from what Steven Greydanus suggests may be a self-inflicted pressure to repeat earlier success with twist endings.
Whatever the case, the surprises are forgettable this time around. The last-act jack-in-the-box jolts of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village were all revelatory because they made us reconsider the whole film with new perspective. They gave added resonance and meaning to the story. Here, the surprises seem arbitrary and incidental. They’re either predictable, and thus unsurprising, or merely convenient, which makes them unsatisfying. It seems that Shyamalan has come to confuse mysteries that lead to revelation… with puzzles that need to be solved.
Overconcerned with riddles, Shyamalan forgets all about storytelling. Just as Story herself spends most of the movie stuck in the apartment, so the narrative here never gets up and moves. The truth is that nothing much happens in Lady in the Water. Most of the film consists of people explaining things to each other. Even as he celebrates the power of myth, his own myth is so burdened with convoluted fill-in-the-blanks and multiple-choices that it feels more like a crossword than a mystery.
For those grownups like me who still enjoy imaginative, even preposterous, fairy tales, Lady in the Water has enough going for it to serve as a pleasantly entertaining summertime diversion. But mediocrity is all the more dissatisfying when it comes from someone we know is capable of much, much more. Here’s hoping that our agitated, stuttering writer stops nervously and self-consciously protecting his Story next time, and brings her out in her full glory to dazzle us as she has before.