AND THE TWIST IS.....

rule of thumb...I generally ignore all reviews and critic babble about any movie I have a strong desire to see until AFTER I see it. and 99.9999 percent of the time I ignore most of it anway. (there was a time when it would of saved me from sitting through the genital torture that was BLAIR WITCH 2)..because,I tend to stay in my own little universe when it comes to taste and opinion. YES, I own a copy of The Adventures of Ford Fairlane and I thought TITANIC was a good flick, minus oh I don't know..the acting, the love story etc...etc...Needless to say I am a stubborn turd of opinion in the constant flowing sewage that is the motion picture industry.

However, this weekend I slipped, I was CURIOUS as to what the moronic barking dogs had to say about M. Night Shyamalan's latest flick LADY IN THE WATER. It was ugly, it was shallow, and it was personal. (might I add jealous?) HOW COULD THIS BE? The man is nothing short of genius, I thought. Perhaps there was just something there they didn't understand, something I could find. So the Wednesday after it opened I snuck into an early show and waited for this treasure hunt to begin.

I left an inspired artist. It was as if I had just participated in an honest conversation between two writers (shyamalan and myself). I had just witnessed a victory. I knew the secret and I couldn't wait to share it. Oh there are no real twists in this film. No last minute revelations that leave you feeling duped. I know why the critics hated it and I know why most people will feel ripped off.
Shyamalan is cursed, I willl admit. He snuck in the back door with THE SIXTH SENSE and became an instant phenomenon. But with his films to follow he couldn't quite capture the pizzazz of that first spark. But Shyamalan isn't trying to accomplish this. But the people want familiarity, they want to get exactly what they expect, and if they don't get it they turn sour. ironically, it is this same trick ending that the people loved so much that they are getting now with his later works. (I usually leave out THE VILLAGE all together because it seemed forced to say the least).People want Jim Carey to be funny, they expect Bruce Willis to save the day, they are begging for Angelina Jolie to remain sexy yet strong. And when they don't get it, they get pissed.
But is Shyamalan merely a modern day Orson Welles? Blowing his was early and spending the next 20 years a fizzling dud? Hardly. I consider him more of a butterfly-turning from dark larvae into something beautiful and accomplished.
Shyamalan is a writer's writer. He is about telling a story. And if you don't like it oh well, he's going to tell it anyway. The beauty of hitting it big right out of the gate is that you can quickly build up the clout it takes to do whatever the hell you want. So what if Disney doesn't back you, so what if Roger Ebert belches all over your work. (If anybody knows about creative forgiveness it should be that fat cat he did pen BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS you know). It does not matter -you have an endless universe of stories to tell. And I believe that shyamalan will continue to do this in good and in bad until his last breath escapes him.

Now that I have set it up, let me speak a few thoughts on the actual film LADY IN THE WATER. Is it perfect? No. Does it get a little awkward-Yes. Is it magical? Absolutely. What he has done in this film is create an entire fairy tale and blend it almost perfectly into realism. that is no easy feat. It has always been a concept I have been fascinated with.
There are bumps along the way. Sometimes the fantasy collides with the reality and it gets downright ugly. Hearing perfectly molded characters run off lines of dialogue about snarfs, guardians, healers, teuhkwen- (aw to hell with trying to spell these creatures's names) can get a bit silly at times. Dialogue can tend to get a little stiff and pretentious within a Shyamalan film. In particular, I was having a hard time connecting to Paul Giamati's Cleveland Heep during a rather emotional scene when he claimed he 'saw God' in the faces of his tennants. And a few of these characters are about as trapped as the cramped apartments they live in, but when it shines it shines. And this happens more than the general public would like you to believe.
I would have loved to see this film when I was a child. Because it was truly magical. I would have spent my summers looking for narfs at the public swimming pool or being terrified of creatures hiding in my own suburban lawn. This is where the film wins. If you just remove your expectations, and become 'innocent like the child' you can let yourself get tucked into this bedtime story that drips with heart and has just a hint of horror. It is a real gem of a story.

Shyamalan is an artist bottom line. And if you're an artist as well it will be as if he is letting you in on a little secret that only us writer's know. I would like to think that he's giving the norm a slight 'fuck you' and smiling over his camera lens. Hopefully now that he has blown free of his shackles of expectancy he can go tell the stories he wants. This is hardly the end of Shyamalan's young career, but merely a metamorphosis.