Contradicting Popular Opinion :
An Enquiry Concerning M. Night Shyamalan
INTRO
Taken together his work forms one of the most consistent directorial visions of anyone working today. He’s a true auteur, and there is something to be said for watching his films in order, since his work seems to develop in concert with his inner life.
-Joe Bob Briggs on David Cronenberg
Profoundly Disturbing: Shocking Movies that Changed History
Why start a column about Shyamalan with a quote about David Cronenberg? Hopefully it will all make sense by the end.
I make no guarantees.
For the purposes of this column, we are ignoring anything Shyamalan did prior to Sixth Sense (kinda like music reviewers ignore the first albums of brunette Canadians). I should also warn that there will be SPOILERS everywhere.
SPOILERS.
Now don’t whine to me about it.
Night
I like M. Night Shyamalan. I really do. He makes unconventional, very personal films. He tends to focus on characters instead of action and effects. Night comes up with very interesting shots, he’s good at setting a consistent tone, and great at building suspense.
So what is the problem? Well, Shyamalan is presenting us with reoccurring themes and obsessions. Now, these things in and of themselves are not problems. It is perfectly acceptable for a filmmaker to re-examine the things which interest him/her.
The problem comes when there is little to no progression, or even possible regression.
Let’s take a peek at the M. Night formula:
Component A: A good-natured Caucasian man in denial of his true nature as the film’s center.
In The Sixth Sense Bruce Willis is a pleasant child psychologist who doesn’t realize that he is actually dead.
In Unbreakable Bruce Willis plays a pleasant security guard who doesn’t realize that he is actually super-powered.
In Signs Mel Gibson plays a pleasant farmer turning his back on his old job of preacher.
In Lady in the Water Paul Giamatti plays a pleasant apartment custodian turning his back on his deceased family and his old job as a doctor.
Our leads are always white guys who are quite virtuous. They are widowers or estranged from their wives. They tend to be quite passive.
The big difference to be found between these four leads is that in the first two instances the characters were largely unconscious of their respective denials. At any rate what we have here is M. Night’s version of the archetypical “Reluctant Hero.” The main difference between Shyamalan’s stuff and your average Joseph Campbell formula movie is quite bold, however. In most movies, the hero accepts his position in order to begin an adventure and then becomes fully realized in the course of said adventure. In an M. Night Shyamalan film, the realization serves as the climax. Let’s make this Component B.
Component B: The climax of the film comes when our lead accepts his true nature.
In The Sixth Sense, the climax occurs when Bruce Willis accepts that he is dead.
In Unbreakable, the climax occurs when Bruce Willis accepts his life as a super-hero.
In Signs, the climax occurs when Mel Gibson rediscovers his faith
In Lady in the Water, the climax occurs when Paul G. accepts his role as a healer and confronts the death of his family.
Easy enough, eh?
Component C: The precocious young boy.
In The Sixth Sense, Bruce Willis aids and is aided by a precocious boy who can see dead people. The boy has no visible father, so Willis serves as a father figure.
In Unbreakable, Bruce Willis’s self-discovery is guided by his precocious son.
In Signs, Mel Gibson is clued into the action of the aliens by his precocious son.
In Lady in the Water, Paul G. is aided by the precocious son of one of his tenants.
Component D: Supernatural events.
As Stan Lee puts it, “’nuff said.”
Component E: The prophetic documents.
In The Sixth Sense, Bruce Willis and the precocious kid develop a thorough understanding of these supernatural events by virtue of the kid’s experiences and Willis’s guesswork. (This makes quite a bit of sense.)
In Unbreakable, Bruce Willis and the precocious kid develop a thorough understanding of these supernatural events by means of prophetic comic books interpreted by Samuel L. Jackson.
In Signs, Mel Gibson’s precocious son gets a seemingly prophetic book which explains precisely the aliens designs on earth.
In Lady in the Water, the precocious kid is able to predict future events by virtue of decoding secret messages on cereal boxes. (He must have a beautiful mind!) All events are also precisely foretold by a bed-time story known by one of the tenants.
This is a component that makes a little less sense each time M. Night uses it. In The Sixth Sense, knowledge of the supernatural is gained empirically and through trial and error. In Unbreakable a vague sense of the supernatural can be gleaned from the comics, but nothing really specific or useful. (Well, besides foreshadowing Samuel L. Jackson’s true nature.) In Signs, the kid’s book freakishly predicts current events with inexplicable accuracy. In Lady in the Water two characters know precisely what is going on with these preternatural occurrences for no compelling reason. Thematically, it is regression. From a writing standpoint, it’s lazy.
See, with all of these components, you too can write an M. Night script! Huzzah! Make sure that thematically the script focuses on the power of belief, faith, hope, and other crap that is supposed to be uplifting (but I tend to find childishly naive). Make sure the focus is on the external, and the things that are happening to the character and not the things that the character does.
And always remember to brutally kill the movie critic in your film.
Wait a second, you might be thinking. Aren’t you forgetting something? Namely, The Village? Indeed. The Village manages to break out of the standard Shyamalan formula. Instead of the main character denying who he is, we have a whole town of people behaving without regard to their actual circumstances. Also in The Village, we have no supernatural occurrences. Thematically, we have a departure as well. It is about the deceptive nature of authority, which is strikingly different than Night’s other themes which tend towards the virtues of faith, belief, hope, etc. While, critically speaking, the movie didn’t fare too well, it did seem a step in the right direction.
Sadly, this did not turn out to be the case.
At any rate, Shyamalan’s career could benefit by switching things up a bit. Perhaps he could make a film with an anti-hero. Or perhaps an actual villain. Come to think of it, M. Night doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge the existence of the dark side of human nature. Shyamalan doesn’t focus on bad people. I don’t think he understands them. I don’t think that he is in touch with his vices. There is no bad guy in The Sixth Sense. There is a brief and powerful bit with an evil mom poisoning her daughter to death, but these aren’t characters as much as plot devices. Unbreakable has some random unnamed criminals. It does have a villain reveal at the end, but something about it is not quite on the up and up. Signs has inhuman, mostly incompetent baddies. Lady in the Water has grass dogs as the villains.
Maybe there is more to be said here. Shyamalan’s movies don’t feature much gore. Nor do they feature much in terms of profanity. Nor sexuality. Shyamalan himself seems to be in denial about certain dark facts about the material world, and so his movies tend towards the spiritual realm. Characters are seeking salvation externally. They are guided by sacred infallible texts. As such, the films are dogmatic.
With dogma, there is no progress.
