Lady in the Water (21 July 2006)
directed by M. Night Shyamalan
starring Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jeffrey Wright, Bob Balaban, Sarita Choudhury, Cindy Cheung, M. Night Shyamalan, Freddy Rodriguez, Bill Irwin, Mary Beth Hurt, Jeremy Howard
|
MPAA rating: Studio: Warner Brothers, Blinding Edge Pictures, Legendary Pictures Script: M. Night Shyamalan Music: James Newton Howard Running time: 110 minutes Tags: Drama; fairy tales; Fantasy; grass; Mystery; sprinklers; swimming pools; Thriller Tactical strength: [4/10]
|
for some frightening sequences
I'll give you the brief summary first. I liked Lady in the Water better than Shyamalan's last effort, The Village, but not nearly as much as The Sixth's Sense. I think Shyamalan keeps trying to surpass his first big success and keeps failing dismally. At least Lady in the Water kept me guessing up to the very end. I had the entire plot of The Village worked out after seeing the first preview.
Lady in the Water starts with a narrated stick-figure cartoon. Shyamalan wants to invoke ancient myths through a story told in prehistoric pictographic hieroglyphs. Nothing in this foreword tells us anything we really need to know prior to the action of the movie, and I found that it spoiled much of the guessing game that forms the essence of the plot. Essentially, people from our world and the watery Blue world used to communicate, but humans got distracted by worldly goods and slowly ignored their connections to their friends in the water. But, the humans have this one last chance to reestablish the connection with the Blue world, and everything relies on the residents of "The Cove" apartment complex.
Paul Giamatti plays Cleveland Heep, the maintenance man of The Cove. One night he goes to investigate someone swimming in the apartment pool after hours and he meets Story (Bryce Dallas Howard). Story seems innocent and in need of protection, and Cleveland offers to help her return home. As Cleveland and Story leave his residence, a scrunt -- a dog-shaped creature with fur like grass -- attacks them, preventing Story from returning. Cleveland asks one of his Asian residents if they have ever heard of a scrunt, and he learns of an ancient bedtime story. Story is a narf. The scrunts try to prevent the narf from fulfilling her mission. The Narf must make contact with her vessel, a writer, and then return to the Blue world. To return to the Blue world, the Narf needs the help of certain humans: the healer, the interpreter, the guardian, and the guild. The remainder of the movie solves the puzzle of which residents of the apartment fit the roles in the bedtime story. Of course, the residents make the wrong assumptions at first. The main tension at the denouement comes from wondering if the residents will figure out their roles in the ritual before time's up.
I find it interesting that Shyamalan has cast himself as the vessel, the writer that will change the world. Story predicts that he won't live to see the changes brought about by his writing, and you have to wonder if Shyamalan worries about creating self-fulfilling prophecy. While watching Lady in the Water, you can't get away from the idea that Shyamalan believes that he has created something momentous, something deeply symbolic, something that should touch my soul with the divine. And yet the events of the story don't support the implication. We learn early in the film that Cleveland lost his wife and children when they were murdered by a burglar. Story does cure Cleveland of his grief, and we have the whispered promise that the writer's works will plant the seeds of changes.
The mythology Shyamalan wants to create doesn't work because we never really see the risk in the film. Because he sets the entire plot in an apartment complex, we don't get a sense that the events will have much more effect than creating new and probably lasting relationships within the building. We don't feel that these events really reach outside to the rest of the world with any sincerity or finality. Nothing indicates that the rest of the world hangs in the balance -- not even clichéd events like earthquakes or plagues. We do see some news reports of wars in the Middle East, but that doesn't create anything unusual over what we can watch every night. The guessing game of which character fills what role in the Blue World ritual provides some pleasant diversions, but at the peak moments of the plot, you just don't feel that really important things other than the life of one individual hang in the balance.
Related Item from Amazon.com
  DVD |
