Review: Lady in the Water (2006)
At this point it feels beyond redundant to discuss M. Night Shyamalan’s fall from critical grace, but it’s worth mentioning because I think it indicates a pattern.
Though the trajectory is not a perfectly straight line, his films, starting with the breakout success of The Sixth Sense, received less and less acclaim just as they became more and more outlandish in their thematic and ideological approach, garnering a plethora of condescending and simplistic insults the likes of which virtually no other filmmaker has amassed. For me, what many saw as a suspense master’s descent into silliness and tonal incoherence was a mere refinement of the same deeply idiosyncratic worldview present in his one and only Best Picture nominated film, but as is often the case, an artist boldly and fearlessly finding their unique voice has a tendency to alienate.
With Lady in the Water, Shyamalan eschewed almost all semblances of his twist-laden, psychologically tormented films for which he became a household name in lieu of something with its roots unabashedly deep in storybook fantasy sentiment, and while it doesn’t contain the same wealth of thrills and deeply-realized performances of his previous films, it’s just as deep and altogether fascinating.
After a whimsically animated bit of fairy-tale backstory, the film is confined to an apartment complex where a stuttering and visibly miserable Cleveland (Paul Giamatti) is the groundskeeper. He finds a graceful water-dwelling creature named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard) in the pool after hours and quickly learns of her true nature despite her perfectly human appearance. Throughout the film, the mythology and goals of these water dwellers and their wolf-like adversaries (perfectly camouflaged by grass-like hair) is revealed bit by bit through an immigrant woman and her daughter, who grew up hearing the legend as a captivating bedtime story.
While this pair along with other characters in the film might initially feel tastelessly stereotyped or comical, as an idiosyncratic and varied group, they contribute tremendously to Lady in the Water’s success as an emulator of storybooks and self-consciously artificial narratives. Perhaps the least sympathetic and most clearly metaphorical figure is the film critic (Bob Balaban) whose scenes consist almost entirely of ridiculing modern cinema or outlining some of its predictable formulas to Cleveland, who pleads for his help in understanding the characters that comprise his budding narrative. While the cynical reviewer is obviously an object of disapproval for Shyamalan, for me he represented much more than a reaction to the literal decline in critical acclaim that the filmmaker experienced at the time.
His pessimism for the state of filmmaking and the systematic approach he seems to use in evaluating them clashes with the vibrancy and involvement of the rest of the cast, who never significant doubt the truth of Story’s story. It’s refreshing to see a film that not only eschews the tedious rigmarole of disbeliever speculation and proof, but actually challenges the audience notion of realism in fiction films. For a director who faces backlash for films that never meant to replicate the dialogue and happenings of real life in the first place, it’s a brilliant and well-earned commentary.
Lady in the Water lacks the same incessantly compelling structure of Shyamalan’s four previous films, but perhaps this was a necessary sacrifice in weaving a narrative about narrative itself. Story herself is not much more confident in what she has to do than the people helping her, and there is a constant sense of discovery and uncertainty within the characters themselves that cleverly mirrors the audience experience of plot. Whether in a children’s picture book or a mature feature film, there are types and symbols understood by the subject, whose mind consciously or unconsciously makes predictions, harbors doubts, or experiences a sense of confusion or fulfillment depending on how the story develops according to expectations.
Partially misled by an overly-calculating critic, and partially misled by their own assumptions, the characters find themselves in the wrong roles within their own story. Though each of them is largely defined by their individuality or lack thereof, these characters — and the film itself — experience quite directly the effects of manipulation and misdirection at the hand of the author. Though the various roles of “healer,” “guardian,” et cetera are quite specific in Lady in the Water, the way in which they fall apart on a whim startlingly clarifies the omniscience of the storyteller in general and their ability to change anything anytime despite what allegedly clever audiences might think.
As is typical for Shyamalan, Lady in the Water achieves immense emotional weight through the slowly-dawning realization that at its core, this is a film about a victim of emotional trauma and how that experience inevitably alters their worldview. While the fantastical backbone here is compelling enough, the character of Story — and often the function of film story itself — is a means to elucidate and alter a particular perspective and character.
Cleveland’s stuttering in response to the trauma of his family’s murder and the presence of a story that exists through a character literally named Story might seem silly, but again, Lady in the Water is purposefully transparent in its depiction of an untrue story. The frequent use of “God’s eye” POV shots and a gorgeously maudlin score by Shyamalan’s unfailing composer James Newton Howard further establish the world of the movie as a land of artifice. Coupled with atmospheric set design (an actual fucking apartment complex was constructed just for the movie) filmed through a contradictorily warm and ominous dichotomy, the style supports the other filmic elements perfectly.
What it is that moviegoers think Shyamalan is failing to do in the majority of his projects I’m not entirely sure. Even if my admittedly clumsy reading of Lady in the Water is total bullshit, its peculiar mood and the way it goes about its story and characters are so plainly meant to be skewed. The insistence on realism as meritorious in itself is a growing problem in both makers and viewers of movies, and while any gut reaction to a film is valid if you ask me, some criticisms just aren’t.
If the bizarre unreality of Lady in the Water leaves an unpleasant taste in your mouth, that’s fine, but if a work of art is “stupid” for acknowledging its own artifice and embracing it to such a clever and poignant end, I’d rather not be smart.
