Thoughts on Shyamalan…

Three observations on the Douhat’s preference of Shyamalan over Nolan, Raimi, and Singer:

1. It’s not reasonable to dismiss films about comic book characters. Spiderman and Batman have as rich a literary heritage as virtually any fictional characters available to us. Directors and actors have much to draw on when creating and rethinking those characters, and can, at the best of times, put together complex, nuanced, three dimensional portrayals. Spiderman 2 is probably the best of the lot; Maguire and Molina in particular do outstanding work giving their characters depth and nuance. That the characters are named Spiderman and Dr. Octopus shouldn’t obscure that fact. The universes are also complex; Batman Begins could have been written by Edmund Burke, and the most powerful moment of Spiderman 2 comes not from any webslinging, but as Peter Parker sits down to eat cake with his next door neighbor. In short, it simply won’t do to give credit to Shyamalan because he “pursues his own vision”; Raimi and Nolan also pursue their visions, and make better movies in the process.

2. The “artist with a singular vision” trope should have been left back in the freshman dorm where it was born. Great art is about both vision and discipline, and for every Magnificent Ambersons (which the studio destroyed) there’s a King Kong or Heaven’s Gate (both cases in which reigning the director in would have resulted in a better movie). I have no sympathy for the idea that directors should be given free reign to do whatever they want, especially after seeing all of the awful scenes that Coppola wanted to include in Apocalypse Now. It’s not even as if Shyamalan is some sort of maverick; he makes movies with big budget actors that drip with sentimentality. He’s not exactly on the cutting edge, making small movies for tiny art house audiences.

3. That said, Shyamalan has his strong points. Watching both Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, you get the sense a) that there’s some real talent here, and b) that this guy has some pretty awful movies in him. Shyamalan does a great job with actors; Willis is very good in the first two, Gibson is supposed to be good in signs, and almost everyone has agreed that Giamatti turns in a fine performance in the latest. A bit of the shine has worn off of Haley Joel Osment, but he was genuinely outstanding in the first film. Shyamalan can also create great set pieces; several scenes in Sixth Sense are terrifying, but there are some even better scenes that manage to convey the inner life of characters without dialogue. That’s some good filmmaking. My favorite Shyamalan (and I really can’t emphasize enough how much I love these scenes) is the first fifteen minutes of Unbreakable. The pathetic effort of Bruce Willis to pick up on the young woman sitting next to him on the train, including his own slow realization of how creepy he’s coming off as, is one of the great uncomfortable moments of American cinema. Shyamalan gives Willis a young child as an audience, so that he knows someone is watching him make a fool of himself. The follow up scene, in which Willis and his family walk into the lobby full of victims’ families, is also very good.

But you also kind of knew that Shyamalan was going to turn in some disastrous efforts. He’s way to fond of using children to convey plot turns, which comes off as both clumsy and sentimental. Even his best sentiment-laden scenes border on dreck; the tearful reconciliation between mother and son at the end of Sixth Sense could have been done much better. Since he depends so much on thick plotting to move his films forward, clumsy and jury-rigged plot elements become particularly evident and glaring, and can really shut the suspension-of-disbelief down when done poorly.

Anyway, I’m not planning to see Lady in the Water, but I’ll be one of the first in line to see Spiderman III.