Lady in the Water
Jul. 28th, 2006 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatThe reviewers and critics, from what I saw online and elsewhere, really do not like M. Night Shylaman's film Lady in the Water and their criticisms ironically are exactly the same as the network executive, who was recently fired by Disney, told Shylaman a year before the film was made. ( If you want to know what those comments were, see my post about four or five days ago on Lady, before I saw the film. Or just read the Entertainment Weekly review.)
Curious, I went to see the film for myself and did not wait for it to come out on DVD as I did with The Village. I've only seen two of Shylaman's films in the theater - the one listed above and the Sixth Sense and my favorite of the films remains without question Unbreakable, which may also be the darkest. My least favorite is Signs. And I do not share the adoration many have of The Sixth Sense. Actually, I prefer The Village, which is more allegorical and haunting, with its obvious and subtle references to fairy tales and how we've used them over time to protect our children, inadvertently harming them in the process. I state this, because Lady in the Water has more in common with The Village than it does with The Sixth Sense, and if you weren't a fan of The Village, I can't imagine you enjoying Lady, but I could be wrong.
Lady in the Water while flawed is not as flawed or as bad as the critics would like you to believe.
In some ways, the criticism feels as defensive and self-indulgent as what they claim the film appears to be. Possibly because the villan, if there is one, is a book/film critic who is reviled for his inability to see the good in anything. He has seen so many films, read so many books, that his expectations are high and he is disappointed if things do not meet them. "There are no original ideas", Faber, the critic claims. "Each film has the same characters, the same regurgiated plots." When he returns from a romance film he'd been paid to see, he tells Cleveland, the film's central character, that "people were thinking aloud in the film - who does that? And the closing scene? They kissed in the rain. They always kiss in the rain, no one really does that." He fails to see the magic anymore.
It is by no means the first time I've seen a filmmaker revile a critic - in the film Willow, Lucas names the General hunting the heroes, Kael, after the famous film critic who reviled Star Wars. And yes, the writer may go a bit over the top in his depiction of the critic. But, at the same time, the critic is important to the structure of Shyalaman's tale - which examines a difficult to describe emotion - the loss of purpose. In the film the critic tells Cleveland what the other characters purposes are, including his own. He defines all the roles. He states the obviousness of it all. How predictable. Life to him has no twists no turns, it follows the same rules. He acts as a sort of dark greek chorus or detractor.
The critic's role in the film reminds me a little of some critics' roles in life. Squashing the creative impulse, restructuring text, art, what have you until it fits what the critic wants and desires as opposed to the artist. There is such a thing as too much criticism. And I think to a degree that is what the film is about. How to find the story admist a sea of criticism, how to save it from detractors and wolves. And knowing that there is a purpose, a point in the telling of it.
Lady shares a great deal in common with Village in structure and mythology, both tales are about a girl running from a wolf. Both reference fairy tales and children's stories, told as warnings. Stories that are scarey and uplifting. And in both tales, a girl travels from a protected world to a dangerous one and back again to change the world in some small way. In the Village, it is to save her lover and the Village with medication, in Lady it is to help the outside world and bring a new sense of purpose to her people. In both films, M. Night Shyalaman plays a pivotal role. His role in Lady is much bigger than Village, but not distractingly so.
So what is Lady about? It's a simple story in structure, not as convoluted or complicated as the critics state. According to the film it centers around a Korean bed-time story. And the story is told to comedic effect in bits and pieces by a Korean College Student and her mother. It is also told in the beginning of the film as a prologue through stick figure drawings much like the ones you might find on the walls of a cave or drawn on a cliff face. After the prologue, we enter the Cove, a small apartment complex in Pennsylvania, surrounded by trees and encircling a small tear-drop shaped pool. We enter it through the point of view of the new tenant, Faber, a book/film critic who has recently arrived from the West Coast. And it is through Faber, that we meet the main character, whose point of view we remain in through most of the film, with only two or three exceptions. Shyalaman cheats with pov in this film in the same ways he did in some of his previous films, sticking in a first person close, then drifting away from it when he needs to make a plot-point. The neatest and tightest of films cheated the least: The Sixth Sense which remains in two points of view - Bruce Willis (pyschologist) and Haley Osmont (little boy who sees dead people). It starts in Willis' then halfway through, we switch to Haley's. (With occassional side trips into Willis' wife's pov and Osmont's mother's - which is where Shyalaman cheats.) The twist is the pov. A trick that is also used in Unbreakable. Shyalaman shifts away from this trick in his later films and that may explain the sense of directionless. Lady like The Village shifts pov several times. It has a large cast and we shift between Cleveland, the stuttering superintendent, Story, the lady, and Faber, the critic. The other characters are primarily seen through those three and shift and change depending on who is looking.
The twist, and there always is one in a Shyalaman film, is more subtle here, not as surprising or shocking or fun. It is a simple thing. And it took me while to even think of it as much of twist. And Lady feels at times like a small indie film not a big studio flick. It is focused on a short time frame, two or three nights. What we are given about the characters is slight and flashes. And the character's roles in the film their purposes reveal as much about them as their lack of knowledge of those purposes do.
Lady is a hard film to discuss without revealing too much of the plot, since it is largely allergorical in nature and dependent on symbolism. It is not, I think, a film that a literal minded viewer would enjoy, but one that someone who likes metaphors may have fun with.
It hit my mood at the right time. And it helped that before the film rolled on the screen it was proceeded by the trailer for the Will Smith film "The Pursuit of Happyness" - which is about a homeless man and his son, the man struggling against all odds to get a career and make ends meet in the big city. And the trailer ends on the quote:"Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do something. Don't let me tell you. Because people will. They will tell you it won't work. They say it because they can't do it. Don't let them take away your belief in yourself." This, if anything, is ironically the theme of Lady in The Water. That even though you don't appear to be successful, that even if you don't live to see your success or change the world directly through your work, it does matter, the doing of it - matters. It has a point. It has a purpose. You affect change merely by telling it and you don't know who may listen. People have purposes we can't see and we can't know. Who are we to tell them what they are and to criticize? Who are we to state what someone else's intent or purpose is? Why can't we just listen?
I won't bore you with Lady's flaws, you can read them in other reviews. And they can be summed up in a sentence or two, the film at times tries too hard to explain itself and is a little too self-referential. But from my point of view, that worked towards its intent, which I felt was to convey what it is like to lose one's sense of purpose and to want to believe in something magical. As the critic, Faber would state, not an original idea, we've certainly seen in it in countless films, books, narratives, but the filmmaker has found a new and interesting way of conveying the theme. A way that made this viewer at least think about it differently.
My rating? Three stars or a B. Also not that scarey. I found certain tv shows such as Buffy, Angel, and Supernatural far more frightening.
Curious, I went to see the film for myself and did not wait for it to come out on DVD as I did with The Village. I've only seen two of Shylaman's films in the theater - the one listed above and the Sixth Sense and my favorite of the films remains without question Unbreakable, which may also be the darkest. My least favorite is Signs. And I do not share the adoration many have of The Sixth Sense. Actually, I prefer The Village, which is more allegorical and haunting, with its obvious and subtle references to fairy tales and how we've used them over time to protect our children, inadvertently harming them in the process. I state this, because Lady in the Water has more in common with The Village than it does with The Sixth Sense, and if you weren't a fan of The Village, I can't imagine you enjoying Lady, but I could be wrong.
Lady in the Water while flawed is not as flawed or as bad as the critics would like you to believe.
In some ways, the criticism feels as defensive and self-indulgent as what they claim the film appears to be. Possibly because the villan, if there is one, is a book/film critic who is reviled for his inability to see the good in anything. He has seen so many films, read so many books, that his expectations are high and he is disappointed if things do not meet them. "There are no original ideas", Faber, the critic claims. "Each film has the same characters, the same regurgiated plots." When he returns from a romance film he'd been paid to see, he tells Cleveland, the film's central character, that "people were thinking aloud in the film - who does that? And the closing scene? They kissed in the rain. They always kiss in the rain, no one really does that." He fails to see the magic anymore.
It is by no means the first time I've seen a filmmaker revile a critic - in the film Willow, Lucas names the General hunting the heroes, Kael, after the famous film critic who reviled Star Wars. And yes, the writer may go a bit over the top in his depiction of the critic. But, at the same time, the critic is important to the structure of Shyalaman's tale - which examines a difficult to describe emotion - the loss of purpose. In the film the critic tells Cleveland what the other characters purposes are, including his own. He defines all the roles. He states the obviousness of it all. How predictable. Life to him has no twists no turns, it follows the same rules. He acts as a sort of dark greek chorus or detractor.
The critic's role in the film reminds me a little of some critics' roles in life. Squashing the creative impulse, restructuring text, art, what have you until it fits what the critic wants and desires as opposed to the artist. There is such a thing as too much criticism. And I think to a degree that is what the film is about. How to find the story admist a sea of criticism, how to save it from detractors and wolves. And knowing that there is a purpose, a point in the telling of it.
Lady shares a great deal in common with Village in structure and mythology, both tales are about a girl running from a wolf. Both reference fairy tales and children's stories, told as warnings. Stories that are scarey and uplifting. And in both tales, a girl travels from a protected world to a dangerous one and back again to change the world in some small way. In the Village, it is to save her lover and the Village with medication, in Lady it is to help the outside world and bring a new sense of purpose to her people. In both films, M. Night Shyalaman plays a pivotal role. His role in Lady is much bigger than Village, but not distractingly so.
So what is Lady about? It's a simple story in structure, not as convoluted or complicated as the critics state. According to the film it centers around a Korean bed-time story. And the story is told to comedic effect in bits and pieces by a Korean College Student and her mother. It is also told in the beginning of the film as a prologue through stick figure drawings much like the ones you might find on the walls of a cave or drawn on a cliff face. After the prologue, we enter the Cove, a small apartment complex in Pennsylvania, surrounded by trees and encircling a small tear-drop shaped pool. We enter it through the point of view of the new tenant, Faber, a book/film critic who has recently arrived from the West Coast. And it is through Faber, that we meet the main character, whose point of view we remain in through most of the film, with only two or three exceptions. Shyalaman cheats with pov in this film in the same ways he did in some of his previous films, sticking in a first person close, then drifting away from it when he needs to make a plot-point. The neatest and tightest of films cheated the least: The Sixth Sense which remains in two points of view - Bruce Willis (pyschologist) and Haley Osmont (little boy who sees dead people). It starts in Willis' then halfway through, we switch to Haley's. (With occassional side trips into Willis' wife's pov and Osmont's mother's - which is where Shyalaman cheats.) The twist is the pov. A trick that is also used in Unbreakable. Shyalaman shifts away from this trick in his later films and that may explain the sense of directionless. Lady like The Village shifts pov several times. It has a large cast and we shift between Cleveland, the stuttering superintendent, Story, the lady, and Faber, the critic. The other characters are primarily seen through those three and shift and change depending on who is looking.
The twist, and there always is one in a Shyalaman film, is more subtle here, not as surprising or shocking or fun. It is a simple thing. And it took me while to even think of it as much of twist. And Lady feels at times like a small indie film not a big studio flick. It is focused on a short time frame, two or three nights. What we are given about the characters is slight and flashes. And the character's roles in the film their purposes reveal as much about them as their lack of knowledge of those purposes do.
Lady is a hard film to discuss without revealing too much of the plot, since it is largely allergorical in nature and dependent on symbolism. It is not, I think, a film that a literal minded viewer would enjoy, but one that someone who likes metaphors may have fun with.
It hit my mood at the right time. And it helped that before the film rolled on the screen it was proceeded by the trailer for the Will Smith film "The Pursuit of Happyness" - which is about a homeless man and his son, the man struggling against all odds to get a career and make ends meet in the big city. And the trailer ends on the quote:"Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do something. Don't let me tell you. Because people will. They will tell you it won't work. They say it because they can't do it. Don't let them take away your belief in yourself." This, if anything, is ironically the theme of Lady in The Water. That even though you don't appear to be successful, that even if you don't live to see your success or change the world directly through your work, it does matter, the doing of it - matters. It has a point. It has a purpose. You affect change merely by telling it and you don't know who may listen. People have purposes we can't see and we can't know. Who are we to tell them what they are and to criticize? Who are we to state what someone else's intent or purpose is? Why can't we just listen?
I won't bore you with Lady's flaws, you can read them in other reviews. And they can be summed up in a sentence or two, the film at times tries too hard to explain itself and is a little too self-referential. But from my point of view, that worked towards its intent, which I felt was to convey what it is like to lose one's sense of purpose and to want to believe in something magical. As the critic, Faber would state, not an original idea, we've certainly seen in it in countless films, books, narratives, but the filmmaker has found a new and interesting way of conveying the theme. A way that made this viewer at least think about it differently.
My rating? Three stars or a B. Also not that scarey. I found certain tv shows such as Buffy, Angel, and Supernatural far more frightening.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-30 01:29 pm (UTC)I was telling a friend about it the other day. One of the major problems the critics and Disney exec had with it was Shyalaman casting himself in the pivotial role. And to a degree I agree with them, it was distracting, although he did a decent job. As my friend commented - we can accept Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner, and Clint Eastwood directing films they appear in - because we don't see whose behind the camera and they've already had a lengthy career as an actor before doing it. But when a director/writer who has not established himself as an actor in anyone else's films does it - it feels self-indulgent and egotistical to us. And I honestly think that may be one of the hurdles that audiences and critics alike struggled to get past.