Mulier in Aqua

In the self-obsessed kingdom of Hollywood, no filmmaker has drawn more attention so quickly than a 36-year old East Indian director named M. Night Shyamalan. In a short five years he wrote and directed four films, which grossed a combined total of more than $700 million in North America alone. Each of these films explored the supernatural - first ghosts, then comic-book heroes, then aliens. His latest, "Lady in the Water," promised more of the same - it has been marketed as a bed-time horror-story - but early screenings had critics panning the movie as being too unconventional for its own good. I'm inclined to agree.

To be fair, M. Night Shyamalan is a master at the craft. He has the ability to mix the thrilling and touching, the emotional with a sense of dread; and "Lady in the Water" is no different. Unfortunately, the film presented difficulties to the viewer that his previous movies did not. We are asked to believe in the supernatural, as we are in his other films; but whereas the average person believes in ghosts, a la The Sixth Sense, aliens like in Signs, and people with extraordinary gifts such as in Unbreakable, being asked to believe in the Friendly Green Giant or Mickey Mouse is very different.

In this case, the supernatural beings in question are narves, a kind of mermaid without fins and slightly blue skin around the eyes. Oh, and very bland expressions. In fact, no expression at all, not even when being chased by a scrunt, the villain in the story. Scrunts are shadowy, camouflauged creatures that move like the monsters from "Brotherhood of the Wolf." According to legend, a scrunt can only harm narves when they are out of the water: "there are rules," we are told. A set of three demi-gods act as the lawmakers, and only fear of these creatures keep the scrunts at bay.

A somewhat confusing opening animation, drawn as though for a children's book, roughly explains the back story: the narves are water dwellers who lived in harmony with men until man's materialism took him inland and eventually to war against his fellow man. The narves send their young maidens to contact man, but "man does not listen." Meanwhile scrunts hunt down and kill many of the mermaids.

If you're kind of lost, you realize what the viewer is up against. It doesn't help that twenty minutes of useless, drizzling dialogue commences following the meeting of our main characters, Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), and Mr. Heep (Paul Giamatti.)

As we eventually learn, Story is a narf sent to Paul Giamatti's pool. She must seek for a writer (played my Shyamalan himself, in his best cameo yet) whom she will inspire to write a book that will change the course of history.

Giamatti is good as a stuttering, nervous superintendant who helps Story fulfill her mission. Howard, on the other hand, has nothing to do. She is bland, undeveloped as a character, and spends most of the movie huddling in a shower stall.

Then there's Shyamalan himself. His acting is very good - he actually looks like a movie star. Unfortuantely, his role displays the same egotism that was prevalent in Signs and The Village - the filmmaker's character in this movie is the real hero, the one who will change history, (according to Story's prophecy), just as in Signs his character was the reason for the chain reaction that brought the film to its conclusion; and in The Village he represented the one with the control to keep his fellow movie characters locked in their medieval soceity. It's an interesting commentary on the filmmaker's ability to "create" and rule the lives in his films. I see it as egotism, and a childish obsession to control, like Neitzsche's Will to Power.

Storyline aside, there's some genuinely good humor (another Shyamalan trademark) concerning quirky characters. First there is the ill-humored film reviewer; then, the man who works out only one side of his body; then the Chinese student and her mother. Some of the best comedic moments revolve around Giamatti's relationship to the older Chinese lady.

Unfortunately, the good acting and periodic comedy is not enough to save the story. It is made as a bed-time story - we know that it will all work out in the end, we know that the main characters must survive, we know that justice will be done. Indeed, the film ends like a Greek comedy, with the gods coming down from the sky to right wrongs and save the day, which is all fine and dandy until you consider that THIS IS NOT A CHILDREN'S MOVIE. It is not marketed towards children, despite the theme; it does not contain cute and cuddly protagonists, and contains internal and external conflicts that have no place in an under-13 movie. It is meant to be entertaining and original. Unfortunately, entertaining it is not. Shyamalan uses long, drawn-out takes with little audio, which worked well in The Sixth Sense, but which just bores us here. Asked if he could figure out a puzzle, the film reviewer responds, "There's no originality anymore,"every story is a regurgitation or re-imagining of a previous regurgitation of a novel idea that had been dreampt up 1500 years earlier. The critic claims to be able to figure out the puzzle, and even though he is wrong, we have already stopped caring.

The film slowly unveils the legend, piece by piece as recounted by the Chinese lady. It allows for some red herrings and more comedic moments, but it also causes the film to drag. The more Heep learns, the more people he draws to himself, and the more unbelievable the film becomes. Never mind the legend - it is incredulous to think that Heep could convince anybody that his story was true, much less the fifteen or twenty people he recruits to help him.

Again, many of Shyamalan's films contain the theme of "purpose." The characters in the films all are part of a larger plan, and their quirks are part of their purposes. The theme reoccurs in "Lady in the Water," but the problem is that we've seen it all before - and done much better - in "Signs." The characters are more believable, the conflicts more interesting, and personal dynamics more engaging in Signs than in Shyamalan's latest offering. The most important scene - invoking a Christian image, as Story is "resurrected" - sees Giamatti let go of his bottled-up anger at himself and ask forgiveness of the people he harmed by his neglect. The "energy" he releases allows the dying Story to be healed at the moment of death. (At this point in the movie, I leaned over to the guy I went with, his hands clutched as though in prayer, and asked, "is this a religious experience for you?" Unfortunately, although that was the point, it failed miserably.)

"Some stories are real!" one character desperately says. Then again, some are not, and this is a story that should never have been told. Stay away from the supernatural, Shyamalan, and bring "Life of Pi" to birth.