Shyamalan-a-thon, Part 6: THE HAPPENING
In January 2007, I read a great script called The Green Effect. The screenplay was written by a filmmaker whose last movie (about a water nymph trying to return home) didn’t sit well with audiences. The Green Effect was dark, and the idea that it conveyed was uneasy and even kind of scary, but at its heart, it was a message about love. It was high-concept to the point where if the audience didn’t buy it then it risked becoming laughable.
The project had been passed around to every major studio before landing at 20th Century Fox, and even there, the concept of the script wasn’t jiving well with execs, who were requesting rewrites before they’d move forward. The problem was that The Green Effect was ready to shoot, but a seemingly lack of faith in the filmmaker, because of poor returns and mediocre critical (and audience) response of his last film had caused Fox to second-guess the writer/director. The Green Effect would soon be rewritten, renamed, and released as The Happening.
If the stars would have aligned on this project, then it might have done for plants and forests what Jaws did for sharks and the ocean. Now, the idea sounds admittedly ridiculous, or even blasphemous, but bear with me for a moment. The idea of Mother Nature getting fed up with the travesties of humanity, or to paraphrase Jurassic Park‘s Ian Malcolm, mankind’s “raping of the natural world,” and deciding to clean house, as it were, by eliminating as much of humanity as possible, is a pretty terrifying idea. I love it, because there’s literally nothing you can do to stop it. On paper it’s a great idea, but in practice the notion is kind of ludicrous, because you have to solely rely on the audience’s ability to suspend their disbelief. But in the case of The Happening, no one could suspend anything.
So what happened with The Happening? Why doesn’t it work? As with all films, it comes down to having a good script, a director with a vision, the ability to carry out said vision, and a cast of actors to sell that vision to an audience. The Happening has one of these: a director with a vision. Unfortunately, The Happening is over-written, (sans two big exceptions) horribly acted, and poorly executed, but not everything about the film is terrible. Once again, we are treated with beautiful visuals and a solid score by the wonderful James Newton Howard. The problem is that the missteps are too great and too many to be overlooked.
No one can argue that M. Night Shyamalan has a vision, but his execution of that idea just doesn’t work here. Like all of his movies, it looks great, but you can thank Night’s frequent cinematographer, Tak Fujimoto, for that. I like the color palette used for the film; with grays, blues, and greens, and we see a healthy dose of Night’s token playbook of shots: static, long takes and slow, tension-building pans. Gone is the beautiful but sporadic insanity of Chris Doyle‘s camera work seen in Lady in the Water, which I would hope Doyle would take as a compliment, and in its place is a camera style, movement, and pace that is more methodical; I’d liken it to Fujimoto’s work on Signs more than say The Sixth Sense. Visually, I think the movie delivers, and like the score, it creates an atmosphere in the film that is not only completely Shyamalan but tries to immerse us into the world of The Happening.
The partnership between M. Night Shyamalan and James Newton Howard is one that’ll go down in film history as one of the epic duos in movie making. Regardless of what you think of Night’s films, the music that he produces with JNH is simply phenomenal. This may be their least-amazing outing together, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good, haunting score by Howard. From the moment the dark clouds of the opening credits fill the frame, we are treated with another soon-to-be-stuck-in-your-head theme from JNH. Obviously, to talk about The Happening‘s music would be a crime without mentioned the amazing cello work by Maya Beiser. The use of the instrument throughout creates an array of emotion that ranges from tension to love. While I wouldn’t call the music here better than those composed for The Village and Lady in the Water, which are arguably two of the most beautifully written scores of the last decade, it’s still classic JNH and wonderfully highlights the events that we watch take place throughout The Happening.
The most important aspect of filmmaking that you need in order to sell an idea is a cast of actors with whom an audience can sympathize; they can make the unbelievable believable. Mark Wahlberg stars as Elliot Moore, a science teacher with marital problems who is trying to piece to together what is ‘happening’ in the world, while he attempts to survive the unseen forces that are plaguing the planet. Wahlberg gives a horribly wooden and stinted performance, and is seen throughout the film looking around like he’s wondering why he signed up for this gig. Perhaps, the audience can relate to him in that regard. Rarely, do we see a glimpse of any kind of emotional oomph, something that you’d think would come hand-in-hand with a story about the apparent end of humanity.
Accompanying him are his wife Alma, played wide-eyed and bewildered by the adorable Zooey Deschanel, his best friend and colleague, Julian (John Leguizamo), and Julian’s daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez). In Zooey Deschanel’s defense, Alma is a poorly written character who was never that interesting to begin with, so the casting of Zooey might seem inspired to those who have read the script, because at least Deschanel is a very interesting actress, and it’s nice to see her in something a little less indie. I’m a big fan of Zooey’s, and I do like her raw, frantic performance in the film, even if she does at times look as confused as Wahlberg.
Shyamalan is known for his amazing casting of children in his films. The Sixth Sense won Haley Joel Osment a Best Supporting Actor nomination, Signs launched Abigail Breslin‘s career, and the work done by Rory Culkin (Signs), Noah Gray-Cabey (Lady in the Water), and Spencer Clark (Unbreakable) can’t be ignored either. Night is a phenomenal kid’s director. In The Happening, we are introduced to Ashlyn Sanchez’s Jess, who plays a mostly-mute 8-year-old thrown in the middle of a national crisis. In The Green Effect, Jess was completely mute, which I thought was brilliant, but I’m sure The Powers That Be nixed that idea quickly. Ultimately, I think Jess is a great character played very well by Ashlyn. I despise how kids are constantly depicted in movies as dumb. Luckily, children in Shyamalan films are never stupid, which I appreciate, and they are usually just as bright and witty as any adult character in the film. If there’s one weakness that all of Shyamalan’s kid actors arguably share it’s that they are portrayed as naive. Jess would be the exception to the rule, but I don’t think she was given enough to play with for an argument to be made sound.
My favorite scene in the movie and my favorite in the screenplay both revolve around John Leguizamo’s Julian. Leguizamo is an underused and underrated actor, and if you’ve ever seen his one-man performance in Spike Lee‘s Freak, then you know what I mean. Here, Leguizamo gives heart to his character and to the story even as he is forced to wade through some nearly-impossible-to-deliver lines. My favorite scene in the script is when Julian is forced to leave his daughter in the hands of Elliot and Alma in an attempt to find his wife. He’s driving through Princeton with some fellow survivors, and when they realize that everyone in Princeton is already dead, Julian tries to console one of the passengers with a math riddle. Unfortunately, due to a hole in the fabric of their jeep’s roof, they’re already dead anyway. It’s a well-written scene that hits the emotion and tense beats of the moment nicely.
The moment that I find the most powerful in The Happening is when Julian decides to part ways with Elliot, Alma, and his daughter, Jess. It’s a tough and even heartbreaking moment, but it culminates when Alma reaches for Jess’ hand and Julian quickly snaps, “Don’t take my daughter’s hand unless you mean it.” Simply, I think it’s compelling and brilliant. It says so much instantly and clearly about Leguizamo’s character and the direness of film. Everything you need to know about Julian you find out through a single line of dialogue.
Another scene that sticks with me on reflection is during the denouement of the film. The event has stopped ‘happening’ and people are slowly shifting back into some kind of normal lives; media correspondents and pundits argue about causes of the event and warn each other that it might happen again, while kids are getting ready for their first day back at school. We find out that Alma is pregnant, and we’re soon greeted with a moment that is so purely M. Night Shyamalan and encapsulates what The Happening was always, and originally, about — love. Elliot drops Jess off at her bus stop and the two say their goodbyes for the morning. He turns back toward his apartment to find that Alma is standing outside. She sways back and forth like a little girl in a sundress with a massive grin on her face. The scene plays out subtlety and silently as Elliot approaches Alma. From their expressions, we know that Alma soon gives him the good news, as we peer at them from the bus stop. It’s a great moment that is never overdone, overly shot, or overly cut and works so well that it almost seems out of place in a film that is so uneven.
Directing is hard to describe to someone who has never been in the position before. On paper it reads something like this: A director blocks out the actors, sets up shots with the DP, says “Action!” and “Cut!” a hundred times, all before returning home for a sleepless night scouring over tomorrow’s scenes. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what good directing is and what isn’t, because a director has his hand in everything from pre- to post- production, from script to screen, and depending on how hands-on the director is, his influence can become more or less apparent to the audience.
For someone like Shyamalan, who serves as a producer, writer, and director on all of his films, when something goes wrong, he takes the blame, and when things go well, he’s draped in praise. It’s a nerve-wracking, obsessive job to which few can relate, which is why I try to cut directors as much slack as humanly possible. For me, great directing is when the director’s presence, his eye and vision, his heart and soul, can be felt on the screen. It’s a feeling that’s hard to describe. It’s more than just how an actor says his lines, how the shot was filmed, or how the scene was cut; it’s a feeling that you know is there, but may be impossible to describe. The scene where Julian yells at Alma before letting her take his daughter has that feeling, and so does the moment at the end where Alma tells Elliot she’s pregnant. From my perspective, you can feel someone who cares deeply about the images on screen during those scenes, which isn’t to say that others don’t, but that’s great directing to me.
The Happening might be a misstep, but I believe that there are still things to praise about the movie. If you’ve never seen it, I suggest checking it out before succumbing to the ‘universally negative outcries’, because like almost every movie, there’s still something to love here. The Happening will always represent a colossal missed opportunity for me, because I know what it should have been like. I saw the images in my head, heard the characters speak, and saw Night’s vision play out. It’s a shame that the world never got to experience that, too.
