Lyricality

I actually saw the movie on Friday night, but the last two days have been a little crazy (family things, job hunt things and Renaissance Fest). Lady in the Water has certainly received votes mostly on both extremes--either it's brilliant, or it's absolute crap, depending upon the person in question. For myself, I will not deny that the film has flaws. However, like the flaws of the characters, I really felt that the flaws of the film made the idea more true to me. The more I think on the movie, the more I love it. For reference, despite being limited to very sparse funds just now, I would see this movie again (and I have no intention at all of seeing POTC2 again).

The opening sequence left a lasting impression upon me, more from the imagery and far less from the narration. With a little tightening, the prologue might have been told without any narration at all. In any case, the basic premise of the movie is an incredibly powerful one, and I could embrace the idea of humanity's muses--their inspirations and their mysteries and their nightmares--hiding just out of view, invisible unless the right person knows how and where to look. Bryce is marvelous as Story, of course. She has this contradictory nature, a sort of earthy ethereal quality that works perfectly for this role. The way she inspires everyone in the film is a slow and subtle awakening, and I can't help but mourn the fact that a good percentage of the audience probably won't be willing to wait for that subtlety.

Shyamalan has already endured a lot of bad press for casting himself in the role of the supposed "savior," so I won't speak directly to that beyond the fact that to my mind, he acted the role solidly and drew no more attention to himself than to any other main character in the film. More importantly, what Story predicts from him as the Vessel is change. Change in itself is neither positive nor negative, although Story's return to the Blue World is predicted as a time of great spiritual renewal. What I see above all else is that in any medium, the author (or director) is developing an incredibly personal project, and that the author is present in all roles, and may therefore cast himself or herself into any role as necessary. That may not be a very popular viewpoint in the creative world, I suppose. I'm not suggesting that the author has the right to create endless Mary Sue characters in an attempt to live out some sort of fantasy, but that ideas do have a source, and we as an audience seem to show a strange discomfort when faced with that source in a personal context.

Err, ignoring that tangent of mine, the element that truly brought the emotional and physical levels of the bedtime story together for me was, of course, Cleveland Heep. This is a man so tangled, so trapped by his own terrible tragedy that surfacing becomes far more than a metaphor for him. His healing touch has already extended throughout the entirety of the apartment complex, cemented in all the momentary acts of care and kindness, enough so that Story's awakening of him is only punctuation to his complete purpose. He is a man of empathy and instinct, who fails only when he trusts someone else over his own impulses. I love the character so deeply that I've already put him on reserve at the_blank_slate, and that may be the highest recommendation of characterization that I can give.

All in all, the idea could have used perhaps another year of what I like to call Silent development--the process of simply keeping an idea to yourself and mulling it over, letting it evolve naturally along with the experiences of everyday life. Nevertheless, the movie is unquestionably worth seeing, and possibly worth seeing again, depending upon how deeply the ideas and imagery affect you.

ETA: I forgot to mention how much I admire Shyamalan for forcing his audience to imagine. The final sequence, with Story and the great Eatlan reflected in the water, is beautiful not only for cinematic reasons, but because it doesn't restrict the viewers to a single interpretation. Sometimes I think that might be the greatest weakness of modern filmmaking--the ability and the willingness to show absolutely everything, even what is almost too fantastic for description.