Moist Tart In The Deep End

M Night Shyamalan. His fans predominantly favor two movies; The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. Then there are his detractors who, from The Village onwards, think he's pretentious, boring and predictable. I seem to have fallen into the gap where I love all his films (except The Happening) but prefer a much disliked fantasy as my favorite of his work...that film being Lady In The Water from 2006.

Lady In The Water is a self proclaimed 'bedtime story' that sees Cleveland Heep, caretaker of The Cove apartments, meet Story, a young woman that looks to have appeared from the apartment's swimming pool. After a bit of investigation, Cleveland soon believes Story is a Narf (a sea nymph) who has come to dry land to inspire a writer, by her very presence alone, into producing a civilization changing work. Meanwhile Cleveland is hiding a dark tragedy from his past. It's a fairy tale for adults...not in terms of graphic language, sexuality or violence...but in theme and content.

So why don't people like it? There are 3 main reasons and I think they're less a problem with the film itself, and more about the baggage that hinders the detractors.

1/ It's silly and badly structured. Bollocks to that I say! More than any of Shyamalan's other movies, Lady is very self aware of what it it. So it's structured deliberately as a bedtime story...finding out details of the plot and fantasy world as you go along (rather than the carefully constructed placement of character and information you might get in say, The Village). And yes, it's a fantasy. It's supposed to be silly. All that talk of Scrunts, Narfs and giant eagles, how could it not be a little silly. But Shyamalan acknowledges this through Cleveland himself, who is told he must listen to the Japanese fairy tale as if he was an Innocent again. A child. In doing so, Shyamalan is challenging the audience to become child-like in their approach to the silly, fantasy aspects of the story.

2/ It's arrogant and pretentious. There's a few reasons why people think this.
First of all, Shyamalan himself plays the individual who will go onto inspire all, and change mankind, with his writings, 'The Cookbook'. Is the director suggesting he will change the world and make it a better place? Hah, I don't think so. Having a storyteller play a storyteller in the narrative only strengthens the subtext; that a story can inspire others to achieve great and good things. In Lady's case, it's quite literal, as the character, Story, is the one doing the inspiring. And sorry to disapoint/shock those critics, but Lady MUST be inspirational; as a practicing artist whose primary interest IS storytelling, Shyamalans drama IS categorically insightful.

It's very self referential and post-modern, and many don't like that kind of showy cleverness, preferring a more conventional, inconspicuous subtext. But what better way to explore the wonder of storytelling than in a story?

The nature of stories are deconstructed. Each resident of The Cove, a microcosm of society, represents a different aspect of language (the building blocks of story telling). For example, Jeffery Wright represents language where words are open to interpretation and Cindy Cheung's student uses words to educate herself. Other use words to explore feelings, to record events, for social formality, to debate, and in Bob Babalan's case to deconstruct stories and critique them. This aspect of having a film critic within the movie riled many in the press, especially when the critic was seen to be overconfident and inaccurate in his conclusions as to what is going on in The Cove. But despite their objections, the majority of critics plainly missed the point and failed to get it...just like in the film.

3/ The direction is poor. All too often I've seen criticism that a shot was out of focus or a person's face was clumsily half framed. But Shyamalan has very carefully considered his shots prior to filming and any such oddities are because he's trying to communicate an idea. In the above examples the shot is out of focus because Cleveland's life is out of focus too, and Story's face is only half in shot to show that Cleveland isn't looking directly at her. But Lady is littered with such compositions, all adding to the narrative, character or themes of the film.

The production design supports this too with the grid like construction of the apartments to represent the orderly human world and the natural elements like trees, grass, water and rain to represent the primal, fantasy world. More than once Cleveland's head is framed by a TV with war footage on it (a metaphor for the unrest in his head) or Story has a conversation, hidden by the wall of the shower (just as keeps hidden important information). As with the best directors, the storytelling isn't all in the words but in the choices in the images shown as well.

As to the film as a whole itself, it's yet another Shyamalan reworking of a man trying to regain faith and restore hope in his life. In this case Cleveland needs to forgive himself for being absent when his family were killed, which is movingly achieved in 'the healing' scene near the movie's conclusion. As with the best feelgood movies, the whole narrative dovetails beautifully into this one powerful moment, resolving the internal character conflict before achieving success (just as Luke has to turn off his targeting computer before destroying the Death Star). In a classic bit of direction, the apartment's sign has only been seen, reversed, from the inside of the building. Only when Cleveland is free that we escape the confines of The Cove, to see it from the outside-in.

Giamatti is superb as the confidence lacking, stuttering janitor but is matched by an eclectic cast from Sarita Chouwdhury's bubbly sister to Bryce Dallas Howard's enigmatic sea nymph. The score is one of James Newton Howard's most powerful to date while ILM's effects, while subtle, compliment the fantasy aspect of the film in an unfussy way.

This is simply great storytelling about the power of belief and imagination. More often than not, Shyamalan turns the pages of his fairytale in such a subtly skillful way that the resulting story revelations are literally spine tingling. If you're unable to free your imagination, you wont get this. If you're a critic that can't get over criticism yourself, don't try it. And if you're not prepared to put the effort into the meaning of the film...or are just plain dumb (hello Sarah Palin!) don't be disappointed when you don't understand something onscreen (it must happen a lot anyway). For everybody else who's avoided this up until now, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised if you give it a go.