'Lady' Be Bad
Another blow for the Shyamalan phenomenon
By Andy Klein
If Unbreakable (2000) and Signs (2002) were disappointments after the triumph of The Sixth Sense (1999), and The Village (2004) a disappointment after those, then what does it mean that M. (for Manoj) Night Shyamalan's latest, Lady in the Water, is yet another step down?
Honestly, I take no pleasure in writing ever more negative reviews of Shyamalan's work. The Sixth Sense is an extraordinary film that, in most years, would have handily stood out as the best American release. (For whatever reason, however, 1999 was also the year of The Matrix and Being John Malkovich.) Even The Village had beautifully conceived and directed sequences that, ever so briefly, could make us overlook the porous, preposterous plot. If only the same could be said about Lady in the Water!
Paul Giamatti stars as an apartment building manager with the neo-Dickensian name of Cleveland Heep. One night he rescues a naked lovely named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), who has been mysteriously appearing in the complex's swimming pool and is now being pursued by some sort of beast. She refers to herself as a "narf," and - through the unlikely and unwieldy agency of two Korean tenants - Heep discovers that a narf is a water nymph from an old fairy tale. Narfs leave The Blue World and enter the World of Humans in order to be seen by a particular someone, who will be changed by the encounter in a way that will (eventually) change the world.
But, wait! There's more: An eagle is supposed to swoop down and pick up the narf for a return trip to Marineland (or whatever it's called), assuming the narf hasn't already been shredded by Scrunts - nasty things, who are afraid of nothing except three other creatures, known collectively as The Tartutic. Since The Tartutic appear to be on sabbatical, Heep has to organize the tenants to protect Story, by figuring out who is The Guardian and who is The Symbolist and what group constitutes The Guild. (I'd be looking for a British newspaper, Paul Verlaine, and the DGA, respectively - which might, in fact, have proved more interesting.)
The first thing you wonder is why Heep doesn't simply turn on that computer conspicuously located on his desk and google "narf" et al. (I did and got millions of hits, many of interest, but none referring to mythical creatures outside of the movie.) Instead, he gets interpretive help from a film critic (Bob Balaban), who is a complete asshole and the closest thing to a human villain to be seen here - at which point Lady in the Water becomes the first narrative since Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel The Dumas Club where an act of literary interpretation becomes a life-and-death matter. The inclusion of Balaban's character cleverly allows Shyamalan to laugh off the coming flood of negative reviews as sour grapes.
OK, I realize it's not fair to expect an upfront fairy tale to follow laws of realism; and Shyamalan has set himself the formidable challenge here of transplanting fairy tale structure into a realistic milieu. But the result is simply jarring: In a child's story, it's OK for the entire community to simply accept all this contrived hoodoo without skepticism. But in an apartment complex in southeast Pennsylvania? It's tough enough for an audience to buy into Shyamalan's contrived assemblage of creatures - let's call it a Manoj-erie - and their rules, but it's even harder to buy into the characters' ready belief.
What's most surprising is that Lady in the Water doesn't have even The Village's slim virtues. It isn't impressively directed or visually memorable. Shyamalan has hired one of the world's greatest cinematographers, Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love, Chungking Express), and drawn utterly unmemorable work from him - which is surely the movie's most astounding accomplishment. V
O
Lady in the Water. Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. With Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Bob Balaban, Geoffrey Wright, Sarita Choudhury, and M. Night Shyamalan. Opens Fri., citywide.
Published: 07/20/2006
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