Movie Reviews
All M. Night Shyamalan films have a central, connecting theme of purpose. The dominating characters are always searching for their place in this world. “Lady in the Water” shares that connection with them all. But there is no big twist, although some twists occur, and “Lady” is much more a fantasy than any of his other films.
Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) is the maintenance man at the Cove, an apartment complex in Philadelphia. Cleveland seems bogged down by life. He’s unsure about himself, second guesses a lot of his own decisions. But he’s straightforward. If there is a job he needs to do, he doesn’t toy around, he just does it. The opening shot of the film showcases this as Cleveland crouches under a sink and squashes a huge bug for a frightened Mexican family.
But before all this, “Lady in the Water” opens with an animated stick-figure story about how the people under the water and the people above it once lived in harmony. The water people had most of life’s hard questions answered, but with time, man ceased to listen. Now the water people have been forgotten, and the world is corrupt.
Cleveland accidentally stumbles upon Story, a narf sent from the “Blue World” to the Cove to fulfill her mission. She must locate the one destined to protect her from the scrunt, a mythical wolf-like creature who prowls in tall grass where it cannot be seen. Scrunts are sent to kill narfs before their rendezvous with the Great Eagle, who takes them home to their final destination.
The story of narfs and such come from one of the tenants in the complex, an old Chinese lady who used to tell the story to her daughter when she was a child. Cleveland agrees to help Story get home, but in order to do so, he must know the story and the rules that come with it. Through many encounters with the old Chinese lady, who refuses to tell the whole story entirely (perhaps because she does not like American culture), Cleveland gathers that he must locate quite a large group of people who were pre-destined to help Story reach home. Each person/group has a specific gift they were blessed with that contributes to Story’s mission.
Apparently, “Lady in the Water” is based on a bedtime story Shyamalan made up and used to tell to his daughters, but that version is the version the Chinese lady tells in the movie, not the one the movie itself actually tells.
Shyamalan’s script is unconventional, of course, and it exists not so much as exposition as it does fable. In fact, some of the exposition is a little sloppy, running from place to place and here to there to fulfill the scripts requirements. But this is not a problem for the film’s message or emotion. There are scenes of great suspense (as when Cleveland is trapped underwater) and great sorrow (as when Story reveals a terrible secret in Cleveland’s past). “Lady in the Water” is a fable and, indeed, fables exist to give us hope and raise questions.
Now, perhaps Shyamalan dances around too much with characters. It is not too long into the film that we realize, along with Cleveland, that he has chosen the wrong people for Story’s mission. He goes through the motions again, and still some of them are incorrect. The plot comes to maybe too much of a halt at these points.
I will address a couple of issues that other critics have brought up, which include Shyamalan’s acting role in the film, and his utilization of the character played by Bob Balaban. Shyamalan plays Vick Ran, an aspiring writer whose fortune is told to him in the film. In the future, Ran’s book will influence a high-ranking government official and the book will indirectly change the world. Many critics have called this self-indulgent; to have Shyamalan cast himself as a world-changing writer. I call it a great performance. The fact that Shyamalan wrote a character that he obviously connected with is not self-indulgent, it is good casting. And Shyamalan is very good in what is his biggest role since before “The Sixth Sense.”
Now to Mr. Balaban, who plays Harry Farber, a film critic living at the Cove. Farber is cynical, presumptuous and an all-around jerk. His views of film in general are similar to the views most critics had of Shyamalan’s last movie “The Village.” Is this an attack on critics? Maybe it is. For that I say this: directors can and should do what they want.
“Lady in the Water” provides us another chance to hear Shyamalan and composer James Newton Howard collaborate again. These two have a near parallel relationship with Hitchcock and Bernard Herrman, who also broke ground together. Howard’s score is resounding, heartfelt, and beautiful. It’s the finest film score I’ve heard this year.
And Giamatti.... It is a shame “Lady” won’t be recognized at Oscar season. As an actor, Giamatti creates a character we love. His Cleveland Heep stutters a lot; a lesser actor would’ve been annoying, Giamatti is flawless. In the final thirty minutes of the film, he delivers a speech so well-written and well-spoken that it transcends most all of Giamatti’s previous performances.
“Lady in the Water” is not a perfect film. But it aims for the fence and in doing so it asks its audience to watch with an open mind. Once we realize the film is a fantasy and a fable, you may not see a better or more euphoric movie this year. *** ˝