Lady in the Water (2006)

Lady in the Water, 2006

Written & Directed by M. Night Shyamalan



It seems M. Night Shyamalan's purpose as a filmmaker is to marry the genres of fantasy and family melodrama. Shall we call it emo-fantasy? It's a purpose I can dig in theory, because in a filmscape littered with impersonal work, Shyamalan's belief that nothing is scary or thrilling unless rooted in human relationships is especially welcome. I would still be a huge fan of The Sixth Sense if it had no twist ending (in fact, I'd probably be a bigger fan), because of the indelible mother-son relationship that gives me a lump in my throat just to think about it. The Lady in the Water continues the emo-fantasy tradition, with the great Paul Giamatti as the wounded, doggedly beating heart of the film. Giamatti turns in a heart-breakingly earnest performance as Cleveland Heep, the lonely landlord with a secret who finds himself the caretaker of a mystical sea creature named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard.) The relationship between Cleveland and Story is delicate and unbashedly touching, and effectively taps into the storytelling archetypes of two wayward souls who heal each other and in the process heal themselves.

So how was this screwed up so badly?

The answer lies in the ridiculously overstuffed backstory Shyamalan has saddled to his wisp of a tale. Supposedly, he wrote the script based on a bedtime story he told his own children. I find this very hard to believe, because it would probably take 110 minutes (the film's running time) to tell the whole thing, at which point any child would be extremely ornery if not out-cold asleep. See, Story has been sent to our world to bring enlightenment, but only if the weird wolf-like creatures don't kill her, and the only way to stop them is to stare them in the eyes, but only if you are the chosen Guardian, but then there are the tree monkeys, who ... well, at this point you can abandon all hope of following the logic of Shyamalan's universe, because a new convoluted rule is introduced on the average of every five minutes. As if the obstacle course for Story's arrival to and safe escape from earth weren't loony enough, the only person who knows all the rules to this bedtime-story-come-to-life is a cranky Korean woman who, of course, needs to have her sass-talking daughter translate for her, but that's only if Cleveland agrees to ... ah, forget it.

Rounding out this clusterfuck is the motley-crew of tenants in Cleveland's building. Here, Shyamalan the director shines just a wee bit, bringing together strangers united by a common address and the goodness of their hearts, in a way that would be exciting and uplifting if Shyamalan the screenwriter wasn't making them jump through such absurd hoops. Worse still, in one of the grossest cinematic miscalculations I've seen in recent memory, is the nauseating character of Mr. Farber, perpetrated by -- say it isn't so! -- Bob Balaban. He plays a snotty film critic who spouts precisely the sort of withering bon mots that have been directed at Shyamalan's ever-slumping career, and delivers such groan-inducing lines as "This is like a scene out of a horror movie" and other gratingly self-referential bits worse than anything in Scream. Shyamalan isn't content to bury the audience in bullshit; he also wants to make sure we know that he doesn't care if we hate his movie, because critics are jerks, so THERE!

Cleveland and his rag-tag team struggle throughout the film to align all the elements for Story's escape: If they do their job, an eagle will swoop from the sky and carry her away. Watching The Lady in the Water, one wishes an eagle would swoop down and carry Giamatti's and Howard's tender performances into a better film.

Grade: D