Lady in the Water is M. Night's worst film to date, which is an accomplishment when taking both Unbreakable and The Village into consideration. I walked into this movie expecting to see a thinly veiled morality play, a masturbatory ego-trip from Hollywood's beloved Sixth Sense visionary, but my hopes weren't even fulfilled on that level. There's not a whole lot of agreement as to whether Lady is about the myth, those who view the myth, or the meaning inherent in the myth (if it exists). The result is a hodgepodge of Mother Goose and melodrama, neither of which are interesting enough to suspend the disbelief needed to accept the director's visual and narrative clunkiness.
One could call this movie build-up without pay-off, but crediting the film with any sort of momentum beyond its opening few scenes would be unnecessarily generous. Much of the film revolves around the titular lady sitting in a shower stall hugging her knees like a drunken party patron charged with the task of performing a Charades version of Rain Man. Paul Giamatti is excellent as usual, even though his character is often lost amidst moments of pointless bathroom exposition (not the sexy kind) and heavy-handed attempts at legitimizing M. Night's flailing career.
Prior to this film, I hoped that M. Night would be a director I could watch progress throughout my adulthood. Even though only one of his films so far had really resonated with me, his oft-mentioned egotism was enough alone to make me enjoy his celebrity status. Lady in the Water is most frustrating to me not because of its shortcomings as a story, but because of the harsh truths it reveals. Namely, that its writer-director was a one-trick pony who'd be better off heading back to film school.
2 comments:
The problem with Lady in the Water that you (and a large majority of critics) have is that you expected something different and weren't able to let go of your artistic pretentions to enjoy what it really was . . .
Remember when you were five years old and a story was just a story -- and you believed in the power and the beauty of the story so completely that it was almost real? This story was pure and free of cynicism.
Did you ever have a favorite video that you watched so many times that you could no longer see through the fuzz and you had to beg your mom to buy you a new one?
Its childhood feelings like this that Lady in the Water attempts to capture and for the most part it does. Narfs, Scrunts? Stupid names of course but the type of names a father would make up for mythical creatures while improvising a bedtime story for them . . .
THIS is why the film is billed as "A Bedtime Story." Its haphazard feel is the exact same way these stories are improvised and elaborated on. The only thing missing is a narrator asking "And then what happened, Daddy?"
Although this may not be M. Night's "best" film, its easily his most honest. It is a movie made exactly the way he wanted, for his children, and for the children in all of us.
Its pretty cool man.
Your argument is that Shamylan made the movie that he wanted to make, therefore we should look past the fact that it sucks.
Let me guess, you also think the Matrix Trilogy is fantastic.
M@, which of this guy's movies do you like the best? I actually think Signs is ahead of Sixth Sense for me. The Village angered me to no end.
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