Lady in the Water

Narf in danger of getting snarfed

2006

Review: June 13, 2008

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Bob Balaban, Cindy Cheung, M. Night Shyamalan

Will either be exactly right or WAYYYY off.

THE SETUP:

Fable about this chick who lives in a pool and has hope for mankind or some shit.

DISCUSSION:

So a few months back I bought this DVD for $2.50, knowing full well that it would require me to go back on my solemn vow to myself never to watch an M. Night Shyamalan film again. But this one was such a flop [Thank you, Jesus], was said to be so awful, and generated such ill-will that I became curious to see it. I am pleased to report that it is even more dreadful than I could have ever imagined.

First the history. Shyamalan made all his movies prior to this one with Disney. The had some gentle [and as it turns out, entirely warranted] criticism of his script for this film, so he huffed and he puffed and he ran over to Warner Brothers, who, like fools, bought in. He also released a book at the same time, about how he “hears voices” and dissing Disney for not believing in his vision and doing whatever he wants. You might recall that there was also a television special at the time that claimed to be an "unauthorized expose" and reveal a “buried secret” in the director’s past, but was revealed to be a very authorized fraud. All of this is a little funny now that this film was a horrendous flop, and the hubris of his book and television show resoundingly slapped down. Nevertheless, there he is in my Sunday New York Times last week, wondering why in the world people hate him so much.

Even if you knew nothing about him, this movie would make you hate him. We begin with this portentous voice-over telling us this legend about how there used to be these sea nymphs who lived in the ocean and who advised the men who lived on land in matters spiritual. But “man’s need to [portentous pause] own everything [portentous pause] led him deeper [portentous pause] into land.” You will recognize the old familiar women = good, spiritual, wise and men = bad, small-minded, greedy divide. So the men moved inland and lost the wisdom of the water-women [what about the guys who lived on the coast?], but the water-women still try to reach them in order to help [thanks a lot, water-lady!], only there are these wolf-things that try to kill the water-women, because they are soooo good with a tangy chipotle dipping sauce. WHY are these wolf-things after the water-women? Whose interests to they represent? Why they represent Shyamalan’s who needs a challenge and a villain. I should also mention, in case you don’t know, that this whole thing arose from a bedtime story he supposedly told his kids before going to sleep.

Okay, so we open on Paul Giamatti as Cleveland Heep [why, isn’t that name simply so everyday and free of pretension?] killing an unseen bug in the apartment of a Latin family, seen screaming and hiding in the background. Giamatti is hilarious as he kills the no-doubt nonexistent bug, and I had a horrible moment where I was forced to ask myself: “Wait a minute? Is it possible that this might actually be GOOD?”

So we continue to introduce our characters, the residents of an apartment building in the Philadelphia suburbs. They all bear the stamp of overly precious screenwriting, each of them being a hair too “just so.” You have the Latino guy bodybuilder who is only developing the right half of his body—it’s true! Bodybuilders really don’t CARE about looking good!—the South Korean mother who speaks no English and her garish daughter, red ends on her black hair, who sneaks out to go clubbing, shouts pidgin English, and favors skimpy bikinis. Into the complex movies Bob Balaban as an icily contemptuous movie critic. Cleveland is either working in the most run-down complex ever, or apartment supers are much more busy than I know, as he is running between apartments all day. He’s annoyed that someone seems to be using the pool at night.

So one night, Cleveland, who lives out in a charming little bungalow next to the pool, hears some splashes. I should also mention that the apartment building surrounds the pool on two sides, and on the other side is unkempt shrubs and woods—where do the residents park? Anyway, he slips, hits his head and falls into the drink, but then wakes up in his apartment with a naked woman in the chair across. She says her name is Story, she’s a narf, and she’s scared to go outside, soon given reason by a wolf that attacks when they go out. So she and Cleveland sleep entwined, which I thought a bit odd for a super and a person he thinks is a trespasser and who, for all he knows, could be jailbait.

The next day he asks the old Korean woman, through her daughter, about this old bedtime story in ancient “Asian Mythology.” The old woman makes a big fuss about how they shouldn’t ask, as though she’s terrified to open this horrible Pandora’s Box, which will leave you asking “What’s the big deal?” throughout the film. What? It’s a dumb bedtime story and knowing it doesn’t put anyone in any danger. It’s just one of many elements that are there for effect alone and don’t really add up to anything. Anyway the deal is that the Narf must be seen by The Chosen One, who is a writer, then she must get back to “The Blue World,” which she will do when a giant eagle comes down out of the sky at the appointed time [it’s a little like E.T.], although the Scrunts, those giant wolves, will try to stop her. Just because they’re malicious, apparently. Cleveland, who just met this girl last night when she showed up naked in his room, believes all this hookum IMMEDIATELY. And it really is the most logical explanation, don’t you think? The cynical among us might assume that she’s a homeless junkie escaping from the sex trade, but anyone clear-headed would know immediately that she’s some narf who need to see a writer then hop a giant bird or get snarfed by grass-wolves. It’s the only thing that makes SENSE!

And guess who The Chosen One [I am not kidding, he is called “The Chosen One”] is? Why—it’s M. Night Shyamalan!

That’s right, Mr. Shyamalan assuages a sizable role as some dude who is writing something called “The Cookbook,” which is “just my thoughts on all the cultural problems. Thoughts on leaders and stuff.” This book will get published, and Shyamalan, who notes that “there are things in this book people won’t want to hear,” will be martyred for his beliefs! BUT a young boy will find the book in a dusty old store and be inspired, grow up to be a great leader, and bring a new dawn of change to the world, all based on the philosophy in this book! Can you BELIEVE the hubris? He’s cast himself as a visionary, martyred for his beliefs, who writes a work that inspires others to create a new dawn of peace and understanding. Why not just make a movie about the second coming and cast himself as Christ?

This is all fleshed out by needless complications such as the Korean mom, who you will recall is terrified lest the story get out, revealing it in dribs and drabs, apparently doing nothing else but obsessing over this stupid tale, but choosing to hold back certain portions to create suspense. Does ANY of that make sense? Then Cleveland has to find the writer, which occupies a fair amount of time, and then Story reads Cleveland’s diary [rude houseguest!] and reveals that he—like all Shyamalan characters—is all traumatized by the death of a loved one in his past. Now that she’s seen the writer, her work is done, so he drops her out by the pool, only to have her attacked by that wolf-thingy. In here is a bizarre sudden switch to slow-motion at the moment the wolf attacks. It is so odd—taking one of the few scares out of the movie by slowing it down until it’s completely ineffective—that I can’t really imagine why he might have done it. Ah well, I suppose it’s far from the only inexplicable thing.

So anyway, more details on the story come trickling out, such as that everyone in the building has a role in this story and they all just need to figure out who they are. No one in the entire building shows the slightest hint of doubt when Cleveland shows up with this flat-out cockamamie story about some water chick and a giant eagle and whatnot, which, uh, strains credulity, to put it mildly. But everything in the movie, from the character names to every element of the story, is a little too “just so,” which would be okay if overall the thing WORKED. I had a glimmer of respect for this movie that lasted a nanosecond, where I thought “OH, it’s kind of about modern people dealing with a fairy tale.” But you know—it’s not. It’s just a really crappy attempt at some half-assed fairy tale that is markedly low on magic and psychological resonance, and by the halfway mark you’re just staring at a bunch of people babbling mumbo-jumbo with the most serious faces they can muster. I believe that poor Giamatti can now file for disability.

So Cleveland reveals that he can hold his breath for 30 minutes at a time when he goes down to Story’s underground lair, at the bottom of the pool. Speaking of that, if she’s safe in the water, how come they don’t dump her back in the WATER? Oh, and why does no one think to give her anything to wear except a shirt? There are kids in this movie, and at times they must be staring right up Story’s vajayjay. Or maybe she doesn’t have one, being a nymph and all.

At this point I have written in my notes: “Incredibly slow and talky and ludicrous.” And there’s 50 minutes to go!

SPOILERS, I GUESS > > >
Numerous more secrets [read: bullshit] are revealed. Everyone in the apartment complex accepts their roles [The Interpreter! The Guardian!] without a thought. This is the kind of movie where you’re going to have to be ready for an eight-year-old boy to look at a cereal box and say “This box is supposed to make me feel happy. And yet I am sad.” There’s also a little of the old Shyamalan directorial “magic,” which is where he creates the illusion of suspense by cutting AWAY from the one thing you want to see. Here it is a wolf attacking—and we cut to Story staring at a walkie-talkie. I have been infuriated by this since the moment in Signs when the aliens finally break down the door, and we cut to a kid staring at a flashlight. Oh, and then we see story getting dragged off by her neck, but a second later she is spotless from the knees up, and only has a few scratches on her calves.

Then Balaban, the movie critic, faces one of the wolves. He recites what SHOULD happen in a movie [you see, movie critics can’t experience real life!], but gets eaten anyway [not shown]. This has been widely interpreted as Shyamalan’s pre-emptive attack on critics that misunderstand his genius. Something jaw-droppingly shoddy happens now: one of the wolves is throwing itself AGAINST one of the doors, when suddenly the door forcibly [i.e. breaking the bolt] opens INWARD.

But wait, there’s still time for Cleveland to get in touch with his feelings about his lost wife and children! Then more bullshit accompanied by MORE wretched score, and finally Story catches her eagle flight. Then it ends. That’s right: JUST ENDS.
< < < SPOILERS END

It was far worse than I imagined. The three criticisms that Disney had on it: that the mythology should be made clearer and dialogue tightened up, that Shyamalan should not take such a large role for himself, and certainly not one as the new messiah, and that he shouldn’t have the movie critic be such an obvious target are quite accurate and really, just the top level of what’s wrong here. The main thing is that the mythology just has very little resonance. We start with the same old recycled bullshit about how mankind has lost touch with nature, needs no ghost to tell us that, but the narf seeing the writer and making it back—what’s that about? And the wolves, what purpose do they serve, aside from that we need some antagonists? Which is not even to mention these monkey things that are supposed to protect Story but are happy to let her be dragged off by her neck and only appear at the last second when they have no resonance. It’s not that this kind of large-scale fable can’t work—I would point to City of Lost Children as an example of a big fable where all of the circumstances make sense and have clear and consistent parallels with the real world. Even Pan’s Labyrinth, which I pretty much hate, must be said to work better as a fable than this. And in the absence of a clear and resonant mythology, the dialogue just sounds like babble and the whole thing gets incredibly boring.

Yes, it’s nothing new to assail Shyamalan’s ego, which we DO have some concrete evidence of [the book, his refusal to take criticism, his television specials], and I think in his case he may have what one might call Streisand Syndrome: He thinks that what audiences really want is to know about HIM. It was well publicized that this story was conceived as a bedtime tale he told to his kids, which I suspect was one of the main draws for him in making the movie: we are supposed to marvel at his innate genius for inventing stories, and be all the more interested because of the glimpse it offers us into the doings of the Shyamalan household. And like Streisand, Shyamalan doesn’t realize that because he has made HIMSELF the basis of his works, that’s why, when people don’t like them, what they don’t like is HIM.

Watching this, I couldn’t help but imagine the poor Shyamalan kids trying to smile politely and indulge their father’s insistence on weaving his own story, while gazing longingly at the volume of Grimm’s Tales on the bookshelf. One thing we don’t have to worry about is whether the Shyamalan children are getting enough sleep.

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

If you want to torture yourself, or you have extremely low standards. If it’s on cable you might want to duck in for a few minutes in the middle to find out for yourself what a wreck it is.