Movies
Good Night
By Esther Iverem--SeeingBlack.com Editor and Film Critic
Jul 21, 2006, 16:21

To draw us into his alter film reality, M. Night Shyamalan has employed corpses, aliens, freaks, cults and, always underneath, some sense of the supernatural. In his latest film, “Lady in the Water,” he turns to a basic staple of storytelling—the fable. (Of course, in his hands, the fable will never be the same again…)

The set for this fable is a dreary apartment building that wraps around a pool shaped like a lopsided heart. Most of the story focuses on the humble, dumpy superintendent of the building, Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), who kills bugs and fixes toilets for the residents while hiding his own horrible secret. Through Heep, we meet the building’s motley assortment of residents, which include Mr. Dury, (Jeffrey Wright) and an elderly Chinese woman, Mrs. Choi, who lives with her college-age daughter.

Heep notices that someone is breaking the apartment complex rule about swimming in the pool after 7 p.m. and, one night, ventures out with a flashlight to catch the culprit. What he sees instead—after falling into the water and being rescued— is a woman with an otherworldly expression (Bryce Dallas Howard). He eventually realizes that the woman, named Story, is some type of nymph from a place she calls “the blue world.” It is though the process of trying to learn more about the nymph, that Heep—and the entire apartment complex—is drawn into world of special rules, magic and dangerous creatures lurking unseen on the premises.

The best thing about Shyamalan’s fable is its sense of imagination, originality and ability to transport us to that special place where we believe the unbelievable. Unlike many of these types of stories, which have a message or some wisdom to offer, the tone is not too earnest or self-important. Shyamalan mocks our awe of the supernatural aspects of fables (and of what we expect from him) by injecting jokes and humor throughout, starting of course, with Giamatti’s doofus and nerdy character, then later lampooning film critics and ending somewhere with goofy takes on divination and heroism.

The worst thing about his fable is probably the way that the story drags in places. You may not have to be a Shyamalan fan to enjoy “Lady in the Water” but you must have patience for a quirky and unconventional storytelling that doesn’t always try to entertain you. You must have curiosity for the slow unfolding of a tale.

There are messages: we humans are violent; we humans are all connected; we have more capability than we think to be peaceful, cooperative, intuitive, discerning and resourceful. The director makes more of an appearance here than he has in past films and actually figures in the plot, which is odd. He plays the part of a writer who has written a book that is predicted by Story to be greatly influential to a future president of the United States. She also predicts that the writer will be killed for his ideas. It is not clear from this bit in the plot if maybe Shyamalan has delusions of grandeur or nightmares of his demise.

One thing is for sure—Shyamalan is always thinking and isn’t afraid to take the chance that his audience is always thinking too.

Esther Iverem is founder of www.SeeingBlack.com and author of the new book of poems, Living in Babylon.

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