Over the weekend, The Hub and I went to see The Lady in the Water, M. Night Shyamalan’s latest movie. This movie got pretty bad reviews, but I don’t think it was because it was a bad movie. I think it was because it portrayed movie critics in a bad light. Actually, the movie kind of blew up the expectations any reviewer would have had about it…..and it’s always a problem when somebody does that. This movie is unlike any movie I had ever seen before, because it didn’t fit into any genre, even taking “M. Night Shyamalan movies” as a genre. It wasn’t scary. There was no “shocking twist” (though there were plenty of subtle twists) And while it drew heavily upon archetypes, it invented it’s own mythology, which required the viewer to pay attention.

This wasn’t Pirates of the Caribbean, you can’t just sit there watching a blur of action, shoveling in pop corn. In fact, if you can’t watch it carefully and with an open mind there is no way you’re going to enjoy it. While you’ll see plenty of archetypical people you know from real life – the burned out building super, the “stoner band”, the nerd, the college student, the lady who is a friend to animals – you won’t see ANY archetypes from the movies (i.e. the handsome troubled hero, “the girl”, the true believers, the wise old minority woman….) From what I understand from other reviews, it’s this lack of familiar movie architecture which leaves so many viewers adrift, unable to “get it”.

The tag line I saw for it in the previews said “A Fairy Tale by M.Night Shyamalan” so I don’t know why anybody would be expecting horror. This is a modern fairy tale in the truest sense of the concept. Such tales were used to impart useful knowledge to young people in ways they would remember vividly (i.e. “count on your brother/sister”, “if something looks too good to be true,it probably is” – Hansel and Gretel) This story is a kind of magical realism – and heavy on the realism. It never leaves behind the dingy, shabby physical space of the apartment complex. Our hero, though as physically brave, psychologically strong, courtly and principled as any lone gunslinger never transforms into a handsome prince, or even loses his stutter. There is no one “magic moment” where everyone transforms, gets on the same page at once. Justice is delayed and there’s no reason to believe it’s ever coming. Though Shyamalan exploits certain deeper archetypes (i.e. “the wise old woman”) he explodes them at the same time. The characters don’t know what to do. People have life altering conversations in bathrooms. The funny and the profound are all mixed together, all at once, just like real life.

Would you recognize a magical being if you saw one? Would you help her if you were able to believe? Could you recognize the hero in the handyman, the healer in the guy down the hall? None of the people in the apartment complex are who they seem to be: yet they don’t know who they really are. And if you “get it” you’ll never look at your neighbor in quite the same light again.