Cereal says it all.
Not often do you live in a time where art and entertainment are impacted in such ways as to immortalize a certain performer/writer/musician/athlete/artist. I’ve been lucky enough to watch Michael Jordan perform from start to finish. Manny Ramirez. Roger Clemens. Pedro Martinez. Lucky enough to listen to Elliott Smith. Bad Brains. Read David Eggers. Etc. Last night I went to see Lady In The Water. The new M. Night Shyamalan film. I must admit, first and foremost, that I’m not much of a superfan of the horror genre. Not that I despise it, it’s just normally not my thing. People regularly pan M Night’s films for being too predictable. Which I find hilarious. I know that plenty of people enjoy going to these types of pictures to crown themselves the next Sherlock Holmes. I regularly hear “I figured it out in the first half hour.” Well, good for you. I choose to let myself get lost in the art form and try not to turn it into a project for myself. Most of the people that claim to “figure out” these films are the people that can’t find golf balls in a golf bag. So I guess it’s some sort of reasoning/logic fulfillment that they lack in other aspects of their lives. Or maybe they just enjoy the challenge. Fine. Regardless, it drives me nuts when people use this formula as a benchmark for their review of a film. It’s kind of like saying “I knew the chorus of the song was coming, it was so predictable that it took something away for me.” Knowing the chorus of “Jealous Guy” by John Lennon is coming makes it no less a perfect song. I guess I’m just a fan of letting art cradle me and carry me off.
Lady In The Water officially makes M. Night a monster in my opinion. It is one of the smarmiest, smartest and most beautifully filmed movies I’ve seen in quite some time. He takes the best complicated neurosis of Paul Giamatti (son of former baseball commissioner, and huge Sox fan, A. Bart Giamatti) and pairs it with the stunning subtlety of Bryce Dallas Howard. The rest of the nameless, faceless cast is flawless and wonderfully understated. Well, the insanely talented Jeffrey Wright isn’t nameless but is just as transcendently humorous as his counterparts. It’s also a cinematographers dream. Now, I know nothing about filming a movie but I do appreciate innovative and intrinsically, esthetically pleasing landscapes. This film is loaded with them. Pieces at the start of the film that were shot in moonlight and nothing else. Dark and mysterious? Sure. But more importantly, real. You feel yourself standing in Giamatti’s shoes. There is also a scene that is in a shower where the curtain is used as the centerpiece. Separating the crossword-puzzled interpreter and the guild of conjoined hearts (which happens to be 5 stoners) from the alien mermaid figure in the hotel tub. I’m not making this up. Smart, moving, cryptic and strangely peaceful and uplifting. This is the first piece of art that Hollywood has funded since Eternal Sunshine. M Night Shyamalan is the finest of his peers. Someone that I will refer to in the same breath as Michael Jordan, David Eggers and Elliott Smith when weighing in my opinions of the true greats in entertainment of our generation.
