Night Falls On Shyamalan

Having been foolish enough to pen an extended defense of M. Night Shyamalan's oeuvre just before the release of Lady in the Water, a film calculated to vindicate all the haters and discredit all his defenders, I was hoping that Night would bounce back in a big way from that debacle. Unfortunately, this doesn't exactly instill confidence:

If The Happening turns out like Lady in the Water, somebody close to Shyamalan should tell him very firmly to take a new direction - by, say, directing somebody else's script for a change.

Comments

How about directing someone else's multi-season cartoon story arc?

Posted by Chris Floyd | February 21, 2008 3:58 PM

That gave me a good chuckle.

Posted by Matthew Struhar | February 21, 2008 4:13 PM

If Night ruins "Avatar" he should never, *ever* be allowed to work again.

Posted by Blaise | February 21, 2008 4:19 PM

"Marky Mark" is the problem here, from what I can see-- the trailer inexplicably includes these ridiculously long and awkward close-ups of him wondering about what's going on. That is laughable.
The concept of chemical warfare in the US is interesting enough, though. "Lady in the Water" was an exercise in vanity, and even the concept was weak. Which was a crying shame given how masterful his other efforts have been.

Posted by MD | February 21, 2008 5:48 PM

MD -

"how masterful his other efforts have been"!?

Have you been in a coma, or did you (lucky you!) manage to miss "The Village", one of the worst movies of all time?

Posted by Greg | February 21, 2008 6:35 PM

in all my years of filmgoing, one rule applies unfailingly - take nothing from what the trailer but exactly what you see. the music, editing, narration, etc, can distort any film beyond recognition (ergo those brilliant mashup trailers, like "the shining" as romcom or "west side story" as zombie movie).

Posted by Max B. | February 21, 2008 6:50 PM

in all my years of filmgoing, one rule applies unfailingly - take nothing from what the trailer but exactly what you see. the music, editing, narration, etc, can distort any film beyond recognition (ergo those brilliant mashup trailers, like "the shining" as romcom or "west side story" as zombie movie).

and "the village" rocks.

Posted by Max B. | February 21, 2008 6:51 PM

The Village was ok, it was Signs that was deeply stupid and even a little offensive.

Posted by mad6798j | February 21, 2008 7:31 PM

The Village was a joke, Besides being so obvious that I figured out the "Big Twist" in the first 20 minutes, even granting the premise, within that it was absurd. Any one of the elders who was in on the secret could have gone for medicine without jeopordizing anything about their "village", but of course then there wouldn't have been a movie so instead they send the blind girl?

Posted by Eric k | February 21, 2008 8:02 PM

I have to agree that Signs was remarkably stupid.

Imagine this scenario:
In some distant future, humans become space-trotting scavangers. We happen upon a planet where we find intelligent beings much less advanced than we are. This planet's surfaces is 70% sulfuric acid. The creatures on the planet drink, piss and cry sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid pumps through their veins.

So we decide we're going to attack them and take the planet by force. So what do we do? We send our invasion force down there naked!

Posted by WillieStyle | February 21, 2008 8:17 PM

The Village was cool-- it had a reasonable plot, characters you cared enough about, and was thought-provoking. The Lady in the Water was utterly lacking in all three regards.

Posted by MD | February 21, 2008 8:27 PM

POOR MARK WAHLBERG BORN WITH A FACE LIKE THAT

Posted by M | February 21, 2008 10:37 PM

Signs was a fine movie and I don't see anything wrong with that trailer.

Posted by Stan | February 21, 2008 11:09 PM

I have some respect for Ross as a political writer, but his defense of Night is pretty sad. Sixth Sense is a smartly written, fun movie. Many later movies utilized the ghost in need of therapy bit. Unbreakable was pretty interesting, but he crammed 45 min of story into 2 hours and weaseled out
inexplicably at the ending - a superhero movie without a good fight at the end? Wtf? A fat, blubbery villain defeated by a choke hold by a strongman? Hm. Bad choice. But it had many nice, quiet little family moments that were valuable.

But Signs showed the beginning of the end very clearly. They weren't deep; that was laughable to think of Night as some sort of mage dreaming deep into the arche and bringing back pearls for us. But Signs showed the trend of his later films - gimicky pastiche attempting to become grandiose metaphysical truth, the ineffable, unspoken truth that is beyond reason and language and ... zzz.

Crop Circles. Oy vey. Crop circles, long debunked, are used by faster than light aliens to signal to each other across a planet. It still hurts to type those words. The incredible stupidity and insult to the audience. The only reason Night used crop circles is because they look cool at night and people think they're unsolve mysteries, like the stupid bees in the current film. It's so formulaic it hurts. He's a hack, imitating his own bad ideas.

Then he recycles War of the Worlds, replete with the kryptnite idea, recycling HIS water idea from Unbreakable instead of air from Well's story. Then he recycles the bigfoot footage for his alien. Then he writes atrocious dialogue, with god-awful dialogue like the dying mom tellig Phoenix to swing away in life, and then so help me, Joauqin ACTUALLY SWINGS HIS BAT at an alien! It hurts, it hurts. The hackery. Mel the preacher who loses his faith, only to regain it. Cliche! The mysterious music and little boy with the baby monitor on top of the car - these little moments are the complete essence of Night - cinematic soundbites, nothing more. Poor, poor writing - the aliens who know advanced star travel but not elementary atmo science and our water in the air. Or that the thing can jump a house but not kick down a flimsy door. It hurts.

The Village - even worse writing and slow, ponderous pacing, transparent plot twists, etc. Terrible dialogue, all trying to convince us of its portent, its massive truths that are always too large to verbalize.

The Lady in the Water. Impossible to criticize enough.
Pretentious, no mythic, magical touch. No enchantment to it.

His movies are pastiche, quilting together of catchy ideas. The bees, the larger than life mood music, the truth beyond the rational intellect, the world wide scope, the family in danger - it's all there. Night hasn't learned his lesson. It's got bomb written all over it.

He shot his wad with Unbreakable, which was 70% of a pretty decent movie, if you watched it on fast forward. I wish I hadn't read Ross' awful defense of his ouevre. It's terrible.

Posted by ross is wrong | February 21, 2008 11:10 PM

Unbreakable was embarrassing crap, and he's been failing up ever since. This one looks like this year's version of Independence Day or War of the Worlds or whatever that crappy one about global warming was called. Shyamalan is more overrated than even Tim Burton. The whole "next Spielberg" thing killed him in the cradle.

Posted by who | February 22, 2008 12:02 AM

With Signs I kept waiting for the shocking swerve... but it never came. It was a movie about scary space aliens. Yippee.

Posted by nbt | February 22, 2008 1:38 AM

The Sixth Sense was fun, I'll admit. The rest (that I've seen) have been terrible. I'd say he needs to give up on doing both the writing and directing. He wants to conjure a grand vision, but his ideas turn out to be muddled, and he lacks the directorial touch to get by.

I see what Ross is saying in his defense, but I'd say Night is kind of like William Shatner: Romantic, dreamy ideas and a sincere desire to be profound, without a lick of sense about how to do it on his own.

Posted by Mike | February 22, 2008 3:34 AM

I kind of preferred "Signs" to "Unbreakable."

"Signs" made absolutely no sense whatsoever and the "water" deal was so goofball it ticked me off. However "Signs" did have some energy to it and the characters were likeable so far as that kind of thing goes. It was like a poor man's "The Birds." Although I think it would've been better if it'd just really went with being that. "The Birds" didn't really explain anything and it could've if it had so desired. The Aliens should've lost, or just left, for unfathomable alien reasons no one understand. At least that would've been less stupid than water.

"Unbreakable", though less stupid, was boring. And I don't think it was boring in some deeply meditative way that makes me think I missed something. It was more like boring in that it just didn't seem to have much energy. Being a villain or being a hero were both just as inert by and large. I didn't much like any character.

Now as I have osteogenesis imperfecta I suppose that colored my view a bit, but I don't think it did so that much. Granted I don't know any OI who killed people, but the idea of an OI villain certainly doesn't bother me as such. Although the OIs I know aren't quite the depressed sadsacks Jackson's character was. In my experience OI's who are jerks tend to be megalomaniacal and sarcastic, not mopey and brooding. (Yes this is stereotyping, but it's based on experience and what I've read in case studies of people with my condition.) The only thing they got really wrong though was the typing system. OI type I is the most mild, but OI type IV is not the most severe. IV has a better survival rate than III, which I believe is my type, and III has a better survival rate than II. Although when I was born, and presumably when Jackson's character was born, this system didn't even exist. Hence I don't know for certain if I even have type III or some other moderately severe form. When I was born the ones like Jackson's character were called "OI tarda", I might be mispelling it as I've only heard it, and I was a person with osteogenesis imperfecta congenita. Which is more than you probably wanted to know and for all I know they explain this on some DVD extra for the movie.

Posted by Thomas R | February 22, 2008 6:06 AM

who - -

Ah! Nice call! Tim Burton. Yes, indeed. Beetlejuice, a creative, fun movie. But for substance? Not so much in Scissorhands (the spiritual vacuity of suburbia is loooong sense an overmined theme), Batman (ugh), Sleepy Hollow (other than Walken, forgettable). Nightmare before Christmas looked good but actually had no meaning at all, and worked for precisely this lack of pretense. And the shark jumping moment: Planet of the apes - the definitive moment when a whole generation realized that Burton sold out and had no mojo.

Intellectuals really strain to find it in movies they like. Ross actually had a simple takedown of Tyler Cowen trying to make Cloverfield into some sort of meta movie a few weeks ago.

Kevin Smith called it by just stating that Burton is an art student who never grew out of the black fashion phase. There's no depth to Burton. It's just pop-Goth. I'm sick of quirk as king in today's movies, shorthand for philosophical but accessible and fun. See: Wes Anderson. Ok, rant over.

Posted by chumley | February 22, 2008 9:28 AM

Here's my take:

The Sixth Sense: magnificent
Unbreakable: very good but unsatisfying ending
Signs: bad
The Village: goofy but ok
The Lady in the Water: awful, just awful

Overall, I like his style, and think its a nice alternative to a lot of modern films, which are too fast-paced, with too much action, etc. I think Unbreakable is underappreciated and Signs is overappreciated. He does seem to be steadily getting worse with time, except that I liked The Village a lot better than Signs.

Posted by Jim W | February 22, 2008 9:40 AM

From the looks of the trailer (a major caveat), it seems like the theme is that the country will be ruined not by a terrorist attack (which is ruled out) but by some mysterious actions of the US government. Ah, Hollywood, you are so very clever, so original, so daring!

Posted by wph | February 22, 2008 10:00 AM

"Signs" should have been utterly unwatchable, given its silly premise, but I enjoyed it because it was often very funny. And I don't mean accidentally funny, a la Ed Wood, I mean deliberately funny.

Shyamalan's last few "thrillers" have been awful, but I suspect he has a few great comedies in him. I'd like to see him chuck the suspense genre for a while and make a flat out farce!

Posted by astorian | February 22, 2008 10:42 AM

Chumley --
don't forget Burton's Willy Wonka movie. Good god, did that suck.

Posted by who | February 22, 2008 10:51 AM

I really can't believe the number of film buffs who think that Night is a real artist. He's good with cinematography, but as far as writing, dialogue, theme, and characters, I really think he sucks eggs, a genuinely embarrassing hack.
There is no subltety in a Night film, no subtext, just that suffocating, smarmy fog of ineffability that he tries to make you think is 'deep.' But he huffs and puffs it out like he has stacks of dry ice in front of industrial fans on the set. Oh man, the worst.

And while I appreciate his desire to slow it down, he is a one trick pony on that score.

Posted by chumley | February 22, 2008 11:25 AM

Also, Night's burying of his real name, while probably useful for his career (much like "Kal Penn" or "Bobby Jindal" or even "Woody Allen") does not sit well with me.

Posted by nbt | February 22, 2008 12:02 PM

nbt:

huh. I guess his real name is: Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan
according to imdb.

Is Nelliyattu the original for Night? must be.

Posted by anon | February 22, 2008 12:13 PM

Next overrated director:

Paul Thomas Anderson.
Hard 8, good until the end.

Haven't seen Punch Drunk.

Boogie: Good director, wretched writer. Boogie Nights is the most cliche movie ever to be praised so highly, in the 90s. Totally flat, uninteresting characters. Well directed, and buoyed by lively acting. Cheap reliance upon mega classic 70s soundtrack to make the movie's moments memorable and poignant.

Magnolia: melodrama riding cheap thrills off of characters all having experienced 1)cancer or 2)molestation. Phony as can be. Ultra hyped. Overwrought, a con.Great soundtrack. Great acting, poor, poor writing.

There will be blood: I don't know about you, but I am getting tired of Day-Lewis being a ham and being called a genius for it. but I like him and he's been great before. A versatile actor. Same dynamic with Gangs of New York. Great sets, terrible scripts, hambone Lewis role supposedly lifts movie up. I didn't think so.

Comments?

Posted by next | February 22, 2008 12:19 PM

I appreciate the slamming of SIGNS, but that doesn't change the fact that it was successful as a feel-good movie. It's like a stupid version of 6TH SENSE. UNBREAKABLE could have been a really good movie, but it was smothered by the same, slow, over-serious style that Night brings to all of his films. THE VILLAGE was a 20 minute Twilight Zone episode stretched into a movie with nothing added into the empty spaces. LADY IN THE WATER might be the single worst film ever made by a talented, commerical filmmaker.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | February 22, 2008 1:21 PM

On an unrelated matter I was giving up newsgroups, forums, etc for Lent. I was still going to check the news online, but I no longer think I can justify posting at Atlantic as news related. So I'll hopefully stop bothering you people now.

Posted by Thomas R | February 22, 2008 1:30 PM

Next, right on about Anderson-- I finally just watched Magnolia and I want my three hours back. I like Philip Seymour Hoffman, but I don't think this role maximized his talent-- and man, if Tom Cruise's character really was modeled on a real person (some sex fiend named Ross Jeffreys?), woe betide us all! ;) I did like Boogie Nights but mainly out of pity for the characters. Wahlberg was well cast, as was William H. Macy, but when I finsihed watching it, I felt gritty... And I did buy the awesome soundtrack!

It does seem like anyone who makes a movie that has some weird twist to it ends up being extolled as a genius...

Posted by MD | February 22, 2008 3:06 PM

Next,
Couldn't agree more about the awful Boogie Nights. I have no idea why it's so highly praised. It was just PTA's lame attempt to cash in on the 90's Tarantino-chic without any of the things that made Pulp Fiction great (characters, story, dialogue etc). Tarantino's underrated Jackie Brown, released the same year as Boogie Nights, is also a vastly superior movie.

Posted by Cpu | February 22, 2008 5:54 PM

Hey I'm surprised people actually agree with me about Paul Thomas Anderson. Another problem with Boogie is its utterly, utterly conventional story arc - the rise and fall of ... his you know what. Count the cliches, none of which are EVER tinkered with or tweaked, they all play out precisely as you would expect: You've got the Stud, his Sidekick, the Mother figure, the feminist Bambi who is trampled upon and then ... hear her roar! (with a stomping rollerskate!), the repressed homosexual wanting to BE/Do the Stud, the Daddy, the Evil Parents who kick our Hero out into the cold world. The one novel character might be the playfulness with the Oreo Brother who makes it rich as the VICTIM of violent crime and then PRETENDS to be a gangsta rapper. Otherwise, this is Screenwriting 101. Weak! PTA just cashed in on the 70s retro thing going on in the late 70s.

CPU - in terms of Jackie Brown... Man, that's an interesting film. Overall, it fell a little short, but what an interesting stretch for Quentin, he tried to film one of his Muses, Elmore Leonard, whom I just read three of his books. I'm not a huge fan, but I can see the allure and skill - boy Elmore makes it look easy.

QT said that DeNiro's character was as well written as anything he'd (QT) ever done. Man, I didn't see that. But there were many, many touches that were just gems in that pic. I like it more as time goes on. And the performance by Pam Grier! Rock solid. And beautiful, whew. Max Cherry - his one note performance slowly shaded into nuance over time for me. He's a tricky SOB.

Yeah, CPU, Jackie Brown is an interesting one. There's all sort of worthy stuff going on there, full of little oddball character spins, and we get to watch them carom off each other (like Keaton's ATF agent or the big bouncer type helper to Cherry, the super finder guy).

One thing I have come to realize is how even the artists I do like tend to repeat themselves. Very few really break new ground more than once. Creativity is a fleeting thing and you take what you can get.

I personally think Quentin was finished being creative in a serious way with Jackie Brown. There's a snap to Reservoir Dogs and Pulp that Jackie didn't have, fine as a movie Jackie remains.

And Kill Bill I and II were actually behind the times with the wire fu, and ... I won't even get into it. But it was the first Quentin movie I could see the punchlines coming, and I knew his shtick too well. His intertextuality is too much at this point.

He needs to get back to writing characters and dialogue and downshift on the tributes, IMHO. (I agree that Christina Lindberg is staggeringly attractive, but her movies just plain sucked, there's a reason no one has heard of them. I don't see his love for such shlock. Ah well.)

For example, take his fun little snippets of conversation in Reservoir: the opening scene in the diner - every single comment made - sets up each character and their future conflicts. It's a marvel of clean, brisk writing. You see the tension between Keitel and Tierney, between Buscemi's ruthless professionalism and the rest, just watch it. The camera circles the table and each actor gets dialogue that is funny in and of itself that also points thematically to the rest of the movie. That kind of double-duty is a joy to catch. I miss that QT. I could do without countless references to grindhouse cinema or blaxploitation film. But, to each his own.

Posted by next | February 22, 2008 7:35 PM

I also want to agree about Day-Lewis. I just saw him (with PTA) on Charlie Rose and it confirmed my impression of him as someone who takes himself and his work WAY too seriously. (Though, to be fair, Charlie Rose encourages that in his interviews.)
I read that Day-Lewis really gets into each role, and acts as that character 24/7 while making a film. That just seems silly. That said, I've loved him in everything I've seen him in, going back to My Left Foot, and since then in such movies as Last of the Mohicans, Age of Innocence, and Gangs of New York.

Posted by MD | February 22, 2008 8:28 PM

Here's something for a laugh:

Go ahead and count the number of times in this 2 minute trailer that Wahlberg uses the following acting technique to convey puzzlement:

Example: "I don't know if any of you guys have heard about this article in the new york TIMES ..." (where caps indicate a sing songy rise in his voice.)

This is the great acting technique Wahlberg uses to convey the puzzlement of a wise man (himself, standing in for Night of course) trying to communicate with someone (you) trapped in a rational, mundane, common sense world view.

Note how he sounds like a lost little boy, the same little boy character he played in Boogie Nights. He's playing a stock Night type: the spookily wise man-child from Sixth Sense. See also: The Ring, The Shining, and numerous other horror movies. (My 2 1/2 year old daughter is currently in the same phase - repeating everything I say and putting a rise at the end. From her, very cute, but no wisdom. Oh, and no vague ontology.)

"What's going ON?"

"Science will come up with some reason to put in the BOOKS, but in the end it'll be just a THEO-RY."

He says theory just like a intelligent design advocate says it, like it's just random opinion, the answer to the jumble. This is dialogue written by a guy who's married to a doctor, and has, according to Wiki, 7 (!) doctors in his close family.

Fascinatingly, I think I went off on a rant above about PT Anderson being a hack, and mentioned how Wahlberg acted like a little boy in Boogie Nights, and I'll be damned, that's probably the vibe that Night liked about him, too. Plugs right into his man-child thing, how the precocious man-child has insight beyond regular sight, yada yada, the eternal child retains in adulthood his curiosity, safe in his Gump-like armor of ignorance.

In Sixth, a boy has the wisdom of a grownup; in this movie, a grownup (so far) seems to think like a child. The circle of life is complete, Simba.

Note another great demonstration of hackery: the Everyone is dead on the Road visuals, a variant of the Everyone is gone from the Road visuals. This latter cliche is SO fresh it was last seen a mere two months ago in Will Smith's Legend. Also seen in 2001 in Cruise's Vanilla Sky and quite a few Twilight Zones. And so on. Of course, another Will Smith movie, Independence Day, had the first one - everyone dies on the road too, but it was in a fireball so it's not the same, right?! And this is in Philly! I feel like Mark Penn: it doesn't count!

You see? Night never met a sf trope he wouldn't set to a snail's pace with moody music and a cold-blue palette.

Cameron from Ferris Bueller then announces something terrible has happened, but to make it more Ominous, he says: "It appears that an Event has happened." Hahaha! An event! Is that clear? What do you think real people would say to that helpful nugget when thinking about their little children and spouses that might be in imminent danger?! Oh man, too rich. And, it 'appears' to have occurred. Ha, ha, it is to laugh. Night thinks that vague, metaphysical generalities are the ticket to depth, you just KNOW (no rise in my voice as I typed it, just for emphasis) he would think most postmodern drivel would be heavy duty.

Here's what I think 'happened' to Night: he once heard that Spielberg found that the shark didn't work very well while he was on location shooting Jaws very well and found that surprise! concerning suspense, less was more.

Then he realized that Hitchcock said if you told people a bomb was under the table while they talked, that created suspense too! (*These are two famous film anecdotes, google em.)

So presto! Put together, you get M. Night Spielcock, who spends his whole career making a religion out of it. And we have to pay for it.

Ah, yes. Ross is right. I AM a hater. It feels good, too. This guy begs to be mocked. That was a load off. I appreaciate you guys. Ok, as you were.

Posted by next | February 22, 2008 11:50 PM

I didn't understand the point of Magnolia. We have a bunch of sad-sack characters connected to the TV industry, and we see some mundane snippets of their interconnected lives, and at the end frogs fall on Los Angeles. WTF?! Plot? Conflict? Hero?

On the other hand, I loved Punch-Drunk Love. Not so much because of Adam Sandler, but I loved the sweet romance in the story.

Posted by nbt | February 23, 2008 2:17 AM

Oh, come on, this movie's so predictable. Obviously, the bees are terrorists from Mars. They will bring the planet to the brink of destruction, until Mark Wahlberg realizes that *he* is also a bee, the queen bee, and he alone can stop the madness.

Then he wakes up and realizes he's actually a robot dreaming.

Posted by guyminuslife | February 25, 2008 11:15 PM