The Happening (2008)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray...

-Alfred Joyce Kilmer

I quoted that poem, above, in my original blog review of The Happening (2008) some seven years ago. 

Much like Roger Ebert at the time, I enjoyed this M. Night Shyamalan film on my theatrical viewing. I found it surprisingly gory and nihilistic and also refreshingly off-beat in a season that brought us a lot of CGI superhero movies.

It was only as the weeks, months, and years passed that the film’s reputation as a laughingstock took on a breathing, pulsing life of its own. The Happening was widely pilloried, mocked, and dismissed. 

Today, it exists as a wonderful punch-line: a movie so "bad" that one can't possibly defend it.

Mark Wahlberg as a science teacher? Scared humans attempting to out-run the wind? Plants communicating with people?

Huh?

For those seeking to take down the film and its director, M. Night Shyamalan, there is plenty of ammunition here by which to accomplish that task. Many folks have availed themselves of it. 

And, I’ll confess, after watching the film for the first time again in seven years, I can see that it is a marked step down in quality for Shyamalan, after his earlier work. Some scenes just don’t come off well, and some scenes that should be powerful instead fall flat

But -- perhaps stubbornly -- I still feel there is some value in The Happening. The late Mr. Ebert’s prophetic thoughts in his review, are similar to my own.  He wrote:

“I suspect I’ll be in the minority praising this film. It will be described as empty, uneventful, meandering. But for some, it will weave a spell. It is a parable, yes, but it is also simply the story of these people and how their lives and existence have suddenly become problematic. We depend on such a superstructure to maintain us that one or two alterations could leave us stranded and wandering through a field, if we are that lucky.”

Specifically, there are three qualities that help me register The Happening as a promising film, even a worthwhile one, in the face of all the steaming piles of negative criticism.

The first such quality is that the film stands tall as perhaps the nastiest, meanest, most grotesque of all Shyamalan’s cinematic works.  Some of the film's imagery (like the shot below), seems deliberately designed to rattle our cages, to bring back the national psychological trauma of 9/11, 

A few moments near the start of the film are actually down-right vicious, and represent an out-and-out horror sensibility that we have not really seen from this director before, even in The Sixth Sense (1999). 

Similarly, the film's coda -- in which another "happening" begins -- is well-in-keeping with familiar nihilistic horror tropes (namely George A Romero's refrain, "what's it going to take to change us?") 

I certainly wouldn’t mind if Shyamalan returned to this darker, grimmer brand of filmmaking in The Visit, staging gory deaths with relish and even going for some dark gallows humor.

Secondly, as much as viewers and critics guffawed over the idea of people communicating with plants and plants emitting deadly neuro-toxins, there is, actually, a basis for fact in some of these ideas, and I enjoy how Shyamalan utilizes the concepts to tell his story of man's denialism.  Basically, plants get fed up and reject humans, deciding that our “sprawl” on the planet is now a mortal threat to their survival. 

So the movie qualifies, perhaps, as the strangest revenge of nature film ever made. 

I enjoy revenge of nature movies, especially those of the 1970s -- like William Girdler's Day of the Animals (1977) -- and The Happening is undoubtedly a call-back; Day of the Trees, or Day of the Plants.  It’s not as if there are no genre antecedents or precedents for what Shyamalan has wrought here. He’s not “out of line” with traditional sci-fi thinking, as so many critics seem to believe. On the contrary, his film fits into a tradition of some great revenge of nature films (The Birds), some effective ones (Kingdom of the Spiders) and some terrible ones (Night of the Lepus).

Thirdly, we must return to the wise Mr Ebert’s comment about The Happening weaving a spell.  

There are moments in the film -- particularly the nasty ones -- that are downright mesmerizing, even trance-like in presentation. Even in vetting what some viewers obviously consider a poorly-conceived film or narrative, Shyamalan is impressive in his compositions and staging. There’s a fatalistic waiting-for-the-other-shoe-(or body…)-to-drop aspect of some death scenes here that prove nothing less than chilling.

Of course, there are the deficits to describe too.

The primary of which -- nothing personal intended -- involves casting.

Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, as a couple, are a big step down from Bruce Willis and Olivia Williams in The Sixth Sense, Bruce Willis and Robin Wright in Unbreakable, and Bryce Dallas Howard and Joaquin Phoenix in The Village. 

By comparison, their characters -- Eliot and Alma Moore -- come across as superficial and silly.  Wahlberg can be a remarkable screen presence (see: Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights [1997], or The Departed), but he typically doesn’t do well with genre material (see: Planet of the Apes [2001]) that requires him to come across as a deep thinker.  

I’m not saying the guy is stupid.  He wouldn’t be where he is right now -- an international star -- if that were the case. I’m only suggesting that Wahlberg doesn’t typically project intelligence (or more accurately, intellect...) in a way that I find convincing or believable.  

Deschanel also seems grievously miscast, too young, big-eyed, callow and distant to be a successful repository for audience identification.

In a way, The Happening reveals how deeply M. Night Shyamalan relies on good actors to transmit his spiritual, humanistic narratives.  Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, Bryce Dallas Howard, Samuel L. Jackson, and Paul Giamatti all bring their “A” game to his films, and their presence lifts the material.  

I can’t, in honesty, claim that Wahlberg and Deschanel accomplish the same feat.  As casting falls under the director’s purview, I am not letting Shyamalan off the hook here, or looking to cast blame on someone else.  I’m just noting that the film’s characters never reach the level of reality or familiarity that they ought to; and that Shyamalan’s characters achieve in other films.

A lot of people will tell you that The Happening is a full-fledged disaster and that it represents the final death of Shyamalan’s career, with later films The Last Airbender (2011) and After Earth (2013) simply kicking the corpse a few more times.

As you might expect, I disagree. 

Although The Happening doesn’t feature to a significant degree the themes of Shyamalan’s earlier works -- a character discovering his or her destiny, and a commentary on the nature of storytelling -- the film’s deficits have nonetheless been exaggerated to a ludicrous degree.  

There are aspects of the film that succeed, even if, I would have to agree that The Happening is, perhaps, the least pleasing and least artistically successful of Shyamalan’s projects.

Still, I can’t bring myself to hate it, or dismiss it out of hand.  I still see beauty and creativity in aspects of it.  

And when I go back and read the extremely hostile reviews, I don’t necessarily blame Shyamalan for trying something unique and falling short.

 I think, instead, much like Alma in the film: “Can you believe how crappy people are?”

“There appears to be an event happening.”

A high-school science teacher Eliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) who is estranged from his wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel), learns at school of a strange happening on the East coast.  

In New York City, citizens have begun to kill themselves, their self-preservation switch flipped off by some compound or toxin

As this strange happening spreads, the couple flees Philadelphia with a math teacher and friend, Julian (John Leguizamo) and his young daughter.

Then the “attack” strikes their city, and they evacuate on a train. Julian heads to Princeton to find his missing wife, and doesn't survive the trip.

The others continue to flee, to ever smaller population circles, as the entire North East is decimated by an attack that seems to be carried on the wind, but which originates not with foreign fighters...but with Mother Nature; with plants.

“We just lost contact…with everyone.”

Who would have guessed that the world would end with a whimper instead of a bang?  That's just one intriguing idea you may reckon with if you take The Happening on its own terms. Doomsday comes for man not with tanks or nukes, but at the hand of something he takes for granted: Mother Nature.

In The Happening, man's destruction -- his destiny -- is carried like a whisper on the wind. After we see turbulent clouds roiling in the sky, people begin to behave strangely in Central Park.  They stop, confused, acted upon some unseen force, and begin to kill themselves in horribly violent ways. 

One woman on a park bench stabs herself with a hair-pin.  Later, at a construction site, bodies fall from skyscrapers in a sudden deluge. The ghoulish punctuation of this death scene involves the passage of a hand-gun from person to person, used in one suicide, then another, then another. Shyamalan’s camera stays trained on the gun, not the final bloody act, as shots punctuate the soundtrack and bodies crumple.

Despise The Happening to your heart's content, but these opening sequences are brilliantly orchestrated, revealing to the audience how reason, and indeed self-preservation, no longer matters to those affected by the neurotoxin.  Again, it’s worthwhile to note that Shyamalan has never been so nasty in his imaginings before, tossing characters off ledges, and staging execution/suicides like some wicked game of musical chairs.

A later scene in the film is just as ghoulish, and dark.  It depicts scared survivors of the "happening" using heavy weaponry to blow away two innocent children who happen to be knocking on their front door.  

Rather than help these kids, the unseen murderers resort quickly to bloody violence, and again, Shyamalan doesn’t shy away from the gore, or the horror of the scenario.  In this case, the point is clearly that man faces problems besides having his “self-preservation” mechanism flipped by a neurotoxin. 

Some humans are also clearly impacted by another devastating "plague" - lack of a necessary conscience, a lack of empathy for others. Who could murder kids at point blank range?  Again, we must ponder that no other film of Shyamalan seems so hopeless about humanity.

The horror scenes in The Happening work just fine, and, indeed, are necessary.  Plants and toxins carried on the wind are not suitable villains, really, in terms of visualization.  They can’t walk or talk. They can’t shoot or stab people. So Shyamalan goes whole hog into the self-inflicted and human-against-huan violence to showcase their impact.  His sense of gallows humor appears in other scenes too.

At one point, when Eliot and his group are visiting a model home in the countryside – a symbol of human encroachment on nature -- a sign reads, on screen: “You Deserve This!”  

That comment could be interpreted two ways. It is meant to be an ad signifiying that customers deserve the comfort and leisure of the model house. At the same time, it is a notice that humanity “deserves” what it gets because of its poor stewardship of the wild, and of the planet as a whole.

Again, this isn’t typically a side of Shyamalan that we see at the movies, so it The Happening, especially in its opening sequence, is a refreshing change of pace.  Or perhaps it might be considered a development (or evolution) of the dark ideas he has carried in his films, but not really depicted head-on.  The early scenes in New York City and Philadelphia give the film the gut-kick that it needs, the visceral punch that keeps viewers on the edge of their seat for much of the running time.

When I talk about an over-the-top or exaggerated response to The Happening, it’s much like the response to the aliens-harmed-by-water subplot of Signs (2002). Specifically, many critics and viewers apparently can’t bring themselves to suspend disbelief in the film’s central idea that plants are rebelling against the human race. 

Yet it is helpful to remember that a plant revolution or attack on humanity is not a new idea in the genre. 

Think about classics like Day of the Triffids (1961), for example. The Happening takes on an idea that has been explored in the sci-fi genre for generations (notably in One Step Beyond's "Moment of Hate" and Space:1999's "The Troubled Spirit,” to name two TV series.

And as I noted in my intro, the film also qualifies as a revenge of nature horror movie, in the spirit of efforts like Frogs (1972), Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) and Day of the Animals (1977). You know this meme by heart if you love horror movies: man's pollution causes nature to go haywire in response and self-correction. 

Perhaps the closest antecedent for The Happening is Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, The Birds (1963). There, as you will recall, a swarm of birds suddenly and inexplicably went on the attack and nearly took out an entire town. There was no explanation for the battle and the bird assault ended as mysteriously as it began.  

The Happening provides an explanation (and you can judge whether that’s a good or bad thing, but just imagine if Shyamalan had provided no explanation for the attack…), and also a warning that the attacks will recur until mankind changes his ways.  This final warning is the oft-seen "call-to-action" element of revenge of nature films; the warning that we are tampering in God’s domain, or that it’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature.  The Happening therefore fits into a pre-existing movie tradition, and is not an exception to tradition or history, as some would have you believe.

And what of the film’s science?  

Well consider some of the plot elements. It has been scientifically proven that plants do respond to human stimulus, so that aspect of the film is factual (and indeed, this idea goes back to that One Step Beyond episode I mentioned above…) 

Similarly, science has proven that plants can emit toxic compounds.  

Where I would suggest the movie gets into some problems with plausibility is its discussion of evolution. Individual populations don’t evolve, only species evolve over time.  If I read the film right, it seems to suggest that plants have just evolved, individually and collectively, to turn on humans, and that doesn’t seem to have any basis in reality, or in our current understanding of science.  Similarly, I wonder if there isn't a difference between having your self-preservation switch turned off, and actively trying to kill yourself.  In other words, you might have no sense of danger, yet still not stick knitting needles in your throat.

But you know, for a Hollywood science fiction film, The Happening isn't especially or egregiously off base. Especially when you accept what passes for science in other major films.  Let us not forget that Superman opens a singularity (essentially a black hole) over Metropolis in Man of Steel (2014) but doesn’t have a plan to close it.  Oopsy.

And Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013) seems to think that cold fusion can be used to transform lava into ice.  

So, once more, it is telling, I think, that Shyamalan’s films are held to a standard that other genre films clearly are not.  

The question is: why?

Why do we punish an individual filmmaker, working on a much smaller budget, for his creative trespasses, but forgive big franchise moviemakers for theirs? 

Understanding the response to The Happening hinges on this issue.  Is The Happening really that ridiculous?

Not all the time.  No. 

But in at least one scene, yeah, it is.  I have to admit it.

The scene in which Elliot approaches and attempts to soothe a house plant is a perfect storm of dreadfulness. Mark Wahlberg is terrible in this scene, talking calmly and sing-songily to the plant, which turns out to be plastic.  When people say the movie is bad, I'm certain that this is the moment they most vividly remember. 

Finally, I feel no shame in acknowledging that for portions of it run, The Happening is, indeed, compelling. Even if you choose to laugh at it, there’s a part of you that will watch, hoping to know where it goes, what it means, and how it will end. 

The film carries a commendable aura of impending, escalating doom, buttressed by all the gory deaths. Furthermore, the film’s best actor, John Leguizamo -- who should have been Elliot -- portrays a character who sees his end coming from a distance, and his performance is haunting and memorable.   

His whole emotional subplot works better than Alma's, and we never even meet Julian's wife. We never believe Alma is having an affair -- and she isn't -- and so her story ends happily, with trust in the marriage restored. It feels like a false or manufactured crisis.

I’ve received and duly read the memo that we’re all supposed to treat The Happening like a joke, in perpetuity, but let me say this: There’s nothing to be gained by taking that route in this review. 

There are plenty of reviews which dismiss, bash, and make-fun of the film all over the net. Read and enjoy them!  I won’t be a part of that mob mentality. Instead, I'll continue to insist that The Happening is an entertaining and ambitious film that could have been, without a doubt, much, much better.

But, The Happening starts strong and ends strong. In terms of the denouement, the film reveals a human race in complete denial, having learned no lessons about its treatment of the planet.  

Even with characters outrunning the wind, and talking to plastic plants, that close-up look at blind, foolish denialism is as realistic and powerful -- and prophetic? -- as any "monster" in any science fiction film ever made.  

Lady in the Water (2006)

M. Night Shyamalan’s 2006 movie Lady in the Water (2006) is a cinematic bedtime story, and on that basis, I find that it succeeds quite admirably as a work of art.  The film most decidedly isn’t a fantasy spectacular or epic like Fellowship of the Rings (2001). In terms of comparison it is merely a story that a parent might tell a child on one night, or on many successive nights. 

So you don’t get armies or orcs or elves battling it out here, just a few mer-people and one very big, very bad wolf (called a “scrunt.”)

A modest bedtime story like this -- a tale shared between generations -- conforms to a specific and familiar structure, and indeed, Lady in the Water seems to determinedly ape that structure. In fact, the story is based on an original bedtime story that Shyamalan told his children.

In the first case, the film tells an adventurous story, featuring some fantasy and adventure elements (Story and the world of the Narfs). 

Secondly, bedtime stories and Lady in the Water generally feature a fixed routine of cliffhangers or twists which build upon one another, and just as often deal reverses as victories. 

In this case, that description means that the film hinges largely on the discovery of secret identities.  Characters here must determine who among a small community is a healer, who is a guardian, who is a symbolist, and finally, what people form a group called a “guild.”

In many cases, the discoveries are wrong, dealing the characters grave and dangerous set-backs at the most inopportune of times.

Imagine watching or hearing the story of this film over several days and you start to sense how cleverly Lady in the Water functions as a bedtime story. You believe you have discovered the identity of the healer, so the plot moves forward. Then you discover you were wrong and back you go to rethink your assumptions.  Each twist in this routine is a high point in a story meant to possess peaks and valleys.  Remember Cole Sear’s sentiment in The Sixth Sense that a good bed-time story needs “twists and stuff.” 

Well, that’s exactly how Lady in the Water plays.

And finally, Lady in the Water ends with the final quality of a bedtime story: sheer emotional exhaustion…since “sleep” afterwards is the overall goal of the narrative. 

Accordingly, we are left, at film’s end, a pile of qyucweubf mush, having gone through all the ups and downs with the characters. We are worn out, spent, but satisfied with the nature of the happy ending.  

And that happy ending, of course, is another key element of bedtime stories.

Don’t want the little ones having nightmares, do we?

In terms of our on-going Shyamalan Series, it is clear how, in significant fashion, Lady in the Water reflects the same concerns the director has obsessed upon in his other works.  For example, this film is about a person (in this case, the character played by Shyamalan himself), discovering his purpose. 

However, the tale has been “flipped” in a sense.  Now, the story is also about the catalyst, Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), and her ability to show others (including Mr. Heep), their purpose in this life.  She catalyzes the whole community, essentially, making every person recognize the potential within.

And much like Graham Hess, Malcolm, David or Elijah, Mr. Heep (Paul Giamatti) is burdened with a strange lassitude, a “soul sickness” in the film because he is not doing what he is meant to do.  He has abandoned his destiny as a healer (after the deaths of his wife and child), and is “hiding” at the Cove apartment complex.  Only his interface with the catalyst, Story, enables him to get back on track with his “correct” destiny. She shos him what he is meant to do.

Finally, Lady in the Water represents Shyamalan’s most caustic commentary on the nature of storytelling.  In fact, he features a despicable character in the film, Farber (Bob Balaban) who is clearly supposed to represent a plague upon all storytellers: the critic. 

In the film, Farber is a joyless, loveless, bloodless soul who takes pride in tearing to shreds artists and works of art.  He believes he has seen it all, that there is nothing new under the sun, and that his wisdom is greater than that of the filmmakers he reviews.  Farber is such a stick-in-the-mud he can’t even conceive of an occasion in which two “real” people would actually stand in the rain, facing each other, getting all wet. 

So naturally, Shyamalan makes that set-up, that composition -- two people standing for a long duration in the pounding rain -- the final, valedictory image of his film. 

He thus demonstrates how, in context -- and without a doubt -- that image can make total emotional sense. 

If it is the last time you will ever see a person who has transformed your life, the pounding rain is not an obstacle. Shyamalan thus proves that it is the critics, not the storytellers, who are all wet.

I know and fully understand that Farber is Shyamalan’s revenge against my profession and its practitioners; those who he feels don’t understand his work and worse, actively resist his work. I don’t take the charge personally. I try not to be that kind of critic, but I can tell you this with certainty: there are folks out there who do take a challenge like this quite personally. They don’t see the put-down as playful, they see it as a declaration of war. So in this case, Shyamalan may have started a war that he can’t win, and the savage critical response to the film proves it. Thus, the over-the-top attack on critics in the film might qualify as self-destructive, from a certain viewpoint.

If you look at a sampling of reviews, you see Shyamalan widely referred to as arrogant, vain, and thin-skinned. That may actually be projection on the part of some critics, but the blows landed on Shyamalan and his film nonetheless.

The result? Negative noise has drowned out the simple, heartfelt virtues of this fable, of this bed-time story.

“Man does not listen!”

By night, a mysterious stranger has been swimming at the pool at the apartment complex called The Cover.  The handyman, Mr. Heep (Giamatti) attempts to catch the perpetrator, and encounters a beautiful young woman, named Story (Howard), in the pool.  The further she gets from water, the sicker she becomes.

Story is a "Narf," a sort of mermaid from the "Blue World," come to change the destiny of the human race for the better. She must "see" a writer living in the Cove and influence him to write a book that will change the world. 

But Story is more important even than that.  

She is actually a future leader of her people, a Madame Narf.  Because of this, a monstrous being, a green wolf called a scrunt, is hunting her, attempting to kill her.  This being doesn't want her to return home to lead her people, and prevents Story from hitching a ride with a giant eagle back to the sea.

Mr. Heep learns, however, that several humans -- a healer, a symbologist, a guardian and a guild -- can protect Story and help her accomplish her mission.  At the very least, they must protect her until supernatural judges, the Tartutic, arrive to dispense justice.

“What kind of person would be so arrogant as to presume the intention of another human being?”

I once asked a friend why he did not like Lady of the Water, and his response was that the story felt made up as it went along.  

I actually understand and appreciate that comment, but feel that this structural quality is sort of baked into the movie.  Lady in the Water is a bedtime story, and bedtime stories are, often, made up as they go along. 

Why? Children are eager and curious listeners, and so they call out the storyteller when something doesn’t make sense. (Think of the sick kid with Peter Falk in The Princess Bride [1986]).   

Therefore, as a storyteller you go back, retcon your story, and then adjust, going forward, so that it makes sense to the listener.  

I have to undertake this process with my eight year old son, Joel, all the time during our night-time ritual.  I have to explain exceptions. I have to reveal why something that happened couldn’t happen in the way he now sees it could have, and so forth.  Kids are smart.  They see how threads connect, and they are aware when they don't connect.

As a bedtime storyteller, you have to be nimble; you have to be a quick thinker.

Hence the “fixed routine of cliffhangers” and “setbacks” in bedtime stories. A good storyteller needs not only to throw in “twists and stuff,” per Shyamalan, but also constantly re-adjust the narrative's trajectory towards the conclusion, in the face of questions and speculation.  Or, described anotherway, in light of constant interruptions from smart kids.

This is what the process of communication is, actually. Think of Gamble and Gamble's Model of Communication for a moment, with encoder and decoder working together, adjusting to the feedback of the other.  That's also how a bedtime story works; the sender must adapt to the responses of the receiver, and change approach.  

In the film, we get the wrong symbolist, guild and healer, and then have to do it all again.  In the film, we get the wrong writer (Farber) and then find the right one.  And we miss the first run of the giant eagle to collect Story, and wonder why the Tartutic (the judges) take so long to find and eliminate the Scrunt.  

All these things have to be explained.

Questions? We have a lot of ‘em!

But if the film’s approach is to feel like a bedtime story, to approximate a bedtime story's feints and lunges -- and Lady in the Water was advertised, actually, as a “Classic Bedtime Story for a New Generation” -- we must ask a question.   

Is this a valid and creative way to structure the narrative?  

My answer would be affirmative.  

In fact, this is an inspired way to tell the story. In the Monomyth, we know we’re going to get the hero, the elder, the gatekeeper, the loki-like mischief maker, the call to action, the quest, and the community changed.  A bedtime story -- a different kind of story -- offers a different set of variables or elements, and as I note here, Shyamalan does his best to conform to them.

He's not making a conventional fantasy. He's not making an epic, or a quest film. He's explicitly crafting a bed time story, so there is no better way to go about his tale, is there?

As a consequence or effect of this type of storytelling, we might feel that it is being made up as it goes along, but is that so bad?  

Did it take away from your bedtime stories, as a kid, knowing that your Mom or Dad was making it up as he or she went along, adjusting to your input, devising new schemes, going one way and then another?

Lady in the Water apes that approach but if you study the actual scenes, it’s clear that Shyamalan knows where it is going all along.  My evidence: information presented early recurs later.  For instance, Farber criticizes the movie romance he sees in a theater, noting that it was stupid for having two characters stand in the rain.  And as I noted above, that’s how Lady of the Water ends.  The movie is actually tightly-structured I would argue, it only seems like it is out of control, in part because of the constant addition of new mythology and new terms (such as Narf, Madame Narf, Scrunt, Tartutic, and so on…). 

Like Mr. Heep, we are constantly having to pay attention as the story twists and turns, and some new elements comes into play.

I also understand why people object to Mr. Farber. He’s kind of a straw man character; the vessel for Shyamalan to bottle all his anger and resentment towards critics.  

In the quotation at the beginning of thus section of the review, a character observes that he can’t understand a person who presumes to understand the intentions of another.  

To me, this is much like Shyalaman asserting that no one can look at art and judge for themselves, based on film grammar, observation, or thematic analysis, what a work of art means.  

And I object to that.  I disagree with that vehemently.  

What kind of person presumes to understand the intentions of another human being?

Just about every person you’ve ever met.  

It isn’t just critics who do this.  

But critics are necessary and valuable in the culture I believe, to remind us that there is a difference between “art” and “entertainment.”  The best critics look to art, see how it fits in with the culture, and reveal to audiences how it was assembled, what it means, and how it means what it means.  

That is significant.  Who else but critics discusses art at all these days?  I don’t defend the critics who have dismissed Shyamalan outright, but I also know that critics have their place, and it is an important place.  

And, also, we all go before critics.  I have a new book out.  And critics will take it on.  They’ll either love it or hate. Those who dislike it, or don’t understand it, will make assumptions about me as a person, as a writer and as an artist. That’s just how it is.  

But it is still worth having the discussion. Shymalan can't expect to make films and have critics not attempt to interpret it, analyze it, or even second-guess it.  

The worst thing, in my experience, that can greet a writer is not harsh criticism, but silence.  

I’d rather be raked over the coals -- and this has happened to me more than once -- than have nobody discuss my thoughts; to greet my musings with nothing but deafening silence. Shyamalan's critics have been unfair to him on more than one occason, I believe, but the answer isn't that critics are terrible, inhuman people deserving of death.  

The answer is more nuanced than that.

In conclusion, I believe that Lady in the Water is quite beautiful, and that the bed-time story structure allows us another lens by which to view the typical Shyamalan obsession: a person denied their destiny. "Story" gives Heep a second chance. And Heep, in turn, assures Story's destiny as Madame Narf.  There's a nice symmetry to this bed-time story, and a powerful emotion release, in that rainy denouement.

You can't count tear drops in the pounding rain, can you?

I understand that the critics of the films of M. Night Shyamalan see the beginning of his “fall” from artistic grace in The Village (2004). They see the descent continuing with Lady in the Water (2006).  

I disagree with that time line. 

I believe that Lady in the Water is consistent with his other works in its obsessions involving destiny and storytelling. I don't believe it is a failure if you understand what the film is (and what it actively declared it was): a bed time story.

Now, The Happening plays on a whole different level, perhaps, but I blame that film’s flaws on the poor casting. Mark Wahlberg has many talents, but playing smart isn't one of them.

But that’s a “story” for another day (or later this afternoon, technically).

The Village (2004)

The Village (2004) might be viewed as the essential turning point -- or even point of no return -- for the genre films of M. Night Shyamalan. 

Although the film was a huge box office hit, grossing over 256 million dollars worldwide against a 50 million dollar budget, it also made significantly less than Signs (2002) did. That film had a global take of 408 million dollars.

Similarly, the reviewers at this point had traveled from mostly positive notices (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs) to strongly-mixed ones in their responses.  From here -- with films such as Lady in the Water (2007), The Happening (2008) and After Earth (2013) -- the trend turned fully, catastrophically negative. 

To put it another way, a critical darling soon turned critical punching bag, and The Village stands at ground zero for that tragic process. On that front, and according to some film-goers, it’s all downhill from here for M. Night Shyamalan.

I don’t feel that way.

In terms of theme and sensitivity of approach, The Village has much in common with the previous films by this director. Specifically, it concerns a main character who finds her purpose in life, and simultaneously involves the nature of sight.  By the same token, the film involves another Shyamalan obsession: storytelling.  It seems to ask, in some canny way, if it is ever okay for a storyteller to lie. 

Is there a greater responsibility for a storyteller than to tell the truth? 

That point roils underenath the film’s structure and characters, and may change how you perceive certain characters, or even the film’s story.

The main protagonist in The Village is also one of my all-time favorite Shyamalan characters: Ivy Walker, played by Bryce Dallas Howard. Unlike Malcolm Crowe, David Dunn, Elijah Price, Graham Hess or Mr. Heep, Ivy is not at all blind to her purpose in life. 

She is actually -- literally -- blind in fact, but not so to what she wants, or how life should be. Specifically,  Ivy is in love with mild-mannered blacksmith Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) and understands that they are supposed to share their lives together.  Dark forces rear their head during the narrative and attempt to destroy that destiny, and Ivy faces incredible peril to preserve what she knows is the right path; to stay on course despite the duplicity and “storytelling” of the Elders in her community, including her father.

But more than anything else, Ivy is a point of significant light. 

I love how the film expresses visually Ivy Walker’s sense of  indomitable courage.  She can’t face the world with her eyes because of her handicap.  Instead, she reaches out to inteface with the world with a remarkable geture: an up-turned palm.  There’s an expectation in that motion; in that action. Ivy knows not what will touch her palm, but she holds her hand out to encounter it nonetheless. 

It’s a beautiful view of optimism and hope; of meeting the world on its own terms without fear or even, really expectation.

I admire The Village primarily as a character study, and to a high degree as her love story.  Ivy is a beautiful person through and through, optimistic in the face of defeat, and tenacious before any challenge. She is truly, wondrously alive, and I could watch Howard play this character in a variety of stories.  She is quite simply delightful. Ivy’s love of dance; her attaching of “color” to those in her life, and other affecting character traits make her, in my opinion, an unforgettable and worthwhile protagonist.

Similarly, the repartee between the loquacious Ivy and the taciturn Lucius is funny and touching.  This duo shares a great scene in which they get directly at their noticeable personality differences in a lover's quarrel.  

“Why can you not say what is in your head?” asks Ivy, flustered.  “Why can you not stop saying what is in your head?” Lucius replies with exasperation. The film features many moments like this one; moments that seem to understand how no one can annoy or irritate us as much as the people we love. They've got our number.  And we have theirs.

So largely on the basis of Ivy’s story, and her journey to achieve her purpose, I count The Village as a strong film.  

Some of the mechanics of the plot don’t work nearly as well for me this time around, and I’ll engage with those deficits in the body of the review.  But suffice it to say that The Village is wholly engaging -- immersive, even -- on a human level first, and so I recommend it on that basis. 

Different movies boast different gifts; different virtues. The Village gives us a remarkable, joyous character in Ivy Walker. It is an unforgettable experience following her on her journey, even if aspects of that specific journey, perhaps, raise questions about storyteller "honesty" and matters of structure.

 “We may question our decisions.”

In a remote, rural village governed by a group of Elders (William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson, etc.), these leaders rebuff the efforts of young Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) to visit the towns beyond, and bring back medicines and tools for the agrarian community.

Soon after Lucius’s entreaties, an old enemy -- monstrous creatures known as “Those We Don’t Speak Of” --- breach the town border, killing live-stock and marking the denizens' houses with the evil color, red.

Meanwhile, a developmentally-arrested young man, Noah Percy (Adrien Brody) stabs Lucius, badly wounding him, when he learns of the blacksmith's engagement to a friend, the blind Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard).

Lucius will die soon without medicine from the towns, and Ivy loves him desperately.  A town Elder and founder of the town, Walker (Hurt) -- Ivy's father -- confides in her about the Village’s true nature, as well as the monsters.

Now, Ivy must venture, alone and afraid, to the towns if she hopes to save the life of her intended husband.

“I see the world, just not as you see it.”

My biggest concern with The Village is the way that it "cheats."  I never felt in The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, or Signs that Shyamalan overtly or blatantly cheated to maintain one of his trademark false realities.

His films work, as you may recall, in the following fashion: A main character goes through life “blinded” by his or her perceptual sets, only to have those blinders removed in the last act.  He or she then sees life how it really is.  Some see this reckoning as a “twist ending.” I prefer to see the new angle of sight as the character’s recognition of his or her previous selective exposure.

In other words, this charcters suddenly sees the world in a new and more truthful away.  All barriers to accurate sight dissipate. The character drops his or her previous perceptual baggage.

But early in The Village, there is a funeral for a child who has died, Danny Nicholson.  We see his gravestone and it reads, on screen -- in close-up no less: 1890 - 1897.  

These dates apparently tell us precisely when the action is occurring (Shortly before the twentieth century), and so we attune ourselves to that context.  We are shown these dates deliberately.

And of course, they are a lie.

The year is not 1897, but likely 2003 or 2004.  The people of “the village” have shunned the modern age and its violence (and technology), and have set back the clock over a hundred years.  The details of this story bear this out, but the grave-stone is, for me, remains a problem.  It answers a question we want answered regarding our orientation as an audience.  It knowingly fools us.  This date is not something nebulous that can be interpreted two ways (like Abby Crowe crying on her bed with a box of Kleenex), but something that is tangible and defined.  And again, it’s a lie.

Now, one might note that it is possible that the families that established the isolated village chose a date, and set the clock and calendar back a hundred years.  But why would they do that in an isolated society?  If there is no outer world worth visiting the Village, why begin it in 1870, say, instead of 1970?  What benefit would that hundred year difference give them?  I can’t frankly, see one.  The people born and raised in the village would have no idea what “1970” means in terms of context, it’s just a number.  So it seems unnecessary to turn back the clock. 

In other words, the date on the gravestone smells to me of a bread crumb left to lead us in the wrong direction, and nothing else.  There aren’t two possible readings of it, and indeed the gravestone is not mentioned at the end of the film, when the truth is learned about the villagers being people displaced from violent modernity

However -- and it seems to me there’s always a “however” with the films of this talented artist -- it is also true that The Village involves implicitly, at least on some level, lies. Or more aptly, lies as they relate to stories and storytellers.

Walker and the other Elders maintain many lies every day.  They maintain the lie of “Those Who Shall Not Be Spoken About.” They maintain the lie of the evil color (red). They maintain the lie of the calendar date.  Walker must eventually explain such lies to Ivy, and she must then choose -- with this knowledge -- what to do.  Does knowledge of the lie make her life better or worse?  Or is the lie, ultimately inconsequential to her happiness?

We can assume that Ivy decides that she still wants the future she had with Lucius before she knew the truth.  We cannot blame her for this.  We all want what is familiar and safe.  Offscreen, she decides that the lie is worth maintaining, because she can still find happiness within its confines.

We must now apply this idea to the film’s storyteller, M. Night Shyamalan.  The presence of the grave-stone date pretty much qualifies as a lie. In this case, Shyamalan is showing us an untruth so he can tell this particular story; weave this particular narrative. 

How can we judge if that is right?

Well what is the narrative?  Is our enjoyment of it worth a lie?  

Well, some might view The Village as a narrative about optimism and courage and hope in the young.  The world may not be what they want it to be, but they can make it better.  The Elders made a choice, and to quote the film “we may question our decisions” -- but their intentions were honorable.  They wanted to make a world free of violence and crime; a world that was secure and safe, and free from modernity. They banished the color red (symbolic of blood) and sought to start over.  So the film asks us explicitly to consider the idea that it may be okay to lie, if the cause is just.

But is it really right to lie for a good cause (like an entertaining cinematic experience?)

Perhaps Shyamalan felt he had to feature that visual lie -- the gravestone -- because his story of hope and courage, and of generations too, was worth telling. And perhaps, structurally speaking, he felt he needed that date on screen.  Perhaps because he didn’t want audiences wondering constantly “when is this taking place?” instead of focusing on the characters and their journey.

I’m not an apologist, however, because I think the artist might have told the same story and subtracted that shot. I think we all would have been okay with that, and indeed that the film would have been improved.  But I can see how the idea of “liars” is woven into the actions of the characters (namely the Elders) and reflected, actually, in the structure of the plot.

My other criticism of the film’s structure involves timing. The Village is structured in such a way that Ivy (and therefore the audience) learns the secret of the monsters before she is menaced by one (really Noah Percy dressed in the suit).  I submit the movie would be a lot scarier if somehow it were possible to alter the order of things in the third act.  So that when Ivy is ensconced in that field of red and menaced by the beast, the audience is still wondering what the hell that thing is.  As it stands in the film, we know it’s Noah, and so we feel less fear and uncertainty than we should.  We should be gripped with terror, wondering what the hell that thing is.

Similarly, I feel that this is the first film the director's made in which Shyamalan doesn’t demonstrate full faith and trust in the audience.  We are probably told one or two too many times by the Elders about people in their families who died. The first time, we go right by it. The second time we understand that it is important information because we have heard it twice. The third time, it plays as obvious that we should be paying attention and anticipating the pay-off.  We get that this is Very Important Information.

Were I to re-edit The Village, I would take out the grave-stone shot, remove one reference to a relative being killed in “the Towns” and try to figure out some way to change the timing of when we know the monster is simply Noah.  That last one is the tallest order.  But I feel the film would be completely rebuilt, and devoid of cognitive noise if those edits were made.  Of course, having seen Lady in the Water, I also know exactly what Shymalan thinks of  second-guessing movie critics!

So why do I still love The Village and count it as a good film? 

Beyond featuring a wonderful central character, Ivy, in some way The Village speaks to the context of the time, 2004.  Take out the specific details and you’re looking at a country (the village) which arranges a false flag operation so as to scare its people into compliance and maintain the secrets of its government. 

In 2003, of course, our government exaggerated us into the Iraq War.  Saddam would use nukes on us, and if we didn’t wage war, the result would be nuclear mushrooms over our cities.  How many times did we hear that nonsense?  

Well, Saddam neither had nukes, nor the delivery system to launch them into the United States.  Yet somehow he became an existential threat that require a very expensive invasion. Never mind that he was a secular bulwark between theocratic nations, preserving the fragile stability of the Middle East...

The point I’m making involves lies (or again, exaggerations). They can be used to get people to do things a government desires.  If you drill down the details of The Village even further, a certain color -- red – denotes fear and danger.

And of course, in 2004, Americans were getting used to the new color-coded graph of terrorism, freshly minted by the Department of Homeland Security. And red -- as it is in the film -- was the color of greatest jeopardy.  Do colors denote meaning?  No, of course not.  (Consider, in 1927 Time Magazine was advocating that boys wear pink and girls wear blue...), but colors are often assigned meaning by social engineers in an effect to reinforce cultural norms, or achieve a social end (like validating the choice to go to war).

Overall, The Village appears to suggest that people can be controlled by lies, but simultaneously – in a weird way -- that one needn’t throw away the baby with the bathwater.  Walker and the Elders have lied and manipulated the people, and Ivy is sad for them because they have transgressed morally. Walker begs her to forgive his “silly lies.”  And to all available evidence, she does.  Life is not so bad that it is worth destroying this village to save it.

I think very few film directors could write such lines as “The world moves for love. It kneels before it. In awe,” and get away with it.  But William Hurt delivers Shyamalan’s dialogue well, and the focus there is right where it should be: on two people separated by fate, joined at heart. The movie may have some structural problems, but its heart is in the right place.

Sometimes, people we love to silly things, or try to make life perfect, forgetting that “heartache is a part of life.”  They stumble in their pursuits.  But The Village suggests that their mistakes were made out of love, and that the progeny of those foolhardy people might make a silly dream into a better version of reality. 

That’s the social contract, isn’t it?  The first generation makes a decision and tries to get things right, failing egregiously along the way. But the next generation starts, inch by inch, to perfect those advances.  Watching The Village, and contemplating the lying, pathetic Elders, all I could think was: the future belongs to Ivy Walker, a blind woman who can see better and more clearly than her sighted father. She will address the wrongs of her father, surely.

The Village is, perhaps, the first Shyamalan film that I have considerable reservations about; that I feel isn’t constructed like the steel trap it should be (and like The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs really are).  It does have some miscues and some faults.  But as a love story, and a story of generations, I find it quite beautiful, and quite rewarding. So I forgive the filmmaker the "silly lies" he utilizes to bring us this story and make it all hang together.

I try not to use the term guilty pleasure anymore -- because I don’t generally feel guilty for liking or enjoying films -- but I must confess that The Village is a film I love, and one that I don’t love entirely for rational or cerebral reasons. Making the intellectual case for it has been more difficult than it was, for instance, with Signs.

But the heart wants what it wants, right?  I may rationally question my decision to love The Village, but love it I do.