Lady in the Water reaffirms the fact
that, while writer/director M. Night Shyamalan
may not always play fairly with his audiences,
he is one of the most stimulating, fascinating
filmmakers in the business today. The movie may
very well be one of the most ridiculous pieces
of work to ever be released to mainstream
audiences in the history of cinema, but despite
this, its allegorical grasp of fantasy is so
detailed and intricate that it proves thoroughly
compelling. In fact, if I was able to accept all
of the numerous character-suggestions that
Shyamalan makes throughout the plot, I would be
tempted to call Lady in the Water a
masterpiece. Unfortunately, despite its
self-proclaimed title of “a bedtime story”,
there are just too many coincidences in the
film’s plot for viewers to buy into its intended
meaning. When my dad used to tell me “bedtime
stories”, they were usually about a magic cow
that had eight utters, each of which dispensed a
different type of soda or juice. I could accept
those for what they were; Lady in the Water’s
happenings, on the other hand, are just
preposterous. While I admire his imagination,
Shyamalan extends his liberty to embellish on
his ideas to such an extent here that it crosses
the unspoken line of the common-courtesy that an
artist must display towards his audience in a
contemporary piece of artwork.
As hinted in my above
comments, Lady in the Water’s plot isn’t
exactly one of the easiest to describe in a
short-synopsis. For this review’s sake, I’ll do
my best to try to make sense of it. The story
follows a troubling discovery of Cleveland Heep
(Paul Giamatti), the resident handyman at The
Cove Apartment Complex. Late one night,
Cleveland sees the need to investigate when he
hears someone swimming after-hours in the
residential-pool, only to find not a tenant but
a mysterious sea-nymph (Bryce Dallas Howard). On
land, this nymph is in endangered by the
possible attack of mysterious, mythological
predators. Cleveland hides her from them in his
apartment and, as he discovers more about her
kind (called the narf), he realizes that he must
participate in a moral-conquest to allow her to
be safely taken home by an Eagle who will be
coming to pick her up. This conquest will
require the fateful participation of other
residents of The Cove.
Due to Shyamalan’s
masterful craftsmanship, Lady in the Water
remains constantly involving, but somewhere
between Cleveland’s initial discovery of
Howard’s narf and a climactic segment in which a
boy translates otherworldly messages by staring
at a cereal box, the film’s abundance of
ridiculous plot-developments becomes deluding.
The abstract cheesiness of the story is never
quite laughable because of the skillful manner
in which it is presented, but in retrospect,
seems totally off-the-wall. Nevertheless,
despite its absurdity, Lady in the Water
never ceased to captivate me, much thanks to its
dense, brooding atmosphere. Giamatti’s amazing
work as Cleveland also helps matters; his
introverted reaction to the looming chaos in the
narrative works perfectly, as James Newton
Howard’s intense score lurks in the background.
It’s a shame that Shyamalan didn’t cut down on
the contrivances of his screenplay as he refined
it because, had he been slightly less reliant on
fortuitousness, the filmmaker’s superlative
virtuosity may have been able to support it to a
degree at which the picture would’ve turned out
great. Lady in the Water may be the worst
film Shyamalan has conceived to date, but it
shows enough creative flare to reassure viewers
that he has many more important works (ala
Signs) left in him to make.
-Danny, Bucket Reviews (7.28.2006)