I hate knowing something about a director before I see their movie. I hate knowing something personal about him, something about his character. Apparently, M. Night Shyamalan is a terrible person. He's arrogant and he cast himself in his own movie.
I once had a writing teacher, names Paul Carter Harrison, an elegant sophisticated man who saw nothing carnal upon seeing snother man stop a woman on the street and tell her "You have incredible legs." He said there was nothing prurient about this because it was as much fact as a blue sky. He also said that when you turn written words over to the screen or the stage, you gotta back up. It's an impossible negotiation, setting a playwright next to a director. It is nothing less than a necessary act of surrender for the playwright, an impossible situation opf setting your child into the world. You've done all you can do, now close your eyes, and let them walk the plank.
M. Night Shyamalan starred, well peripherally, in his film. Knowing, or hearing that he was an ego-maniac, did not help seeing him up there. I looked for aspects of him I could like, to better enjoy the film. He's sort of lovely, the way his eyes hang like his loose shirts. He reminds me a little of my overly brainy and fiercely artistic Long Island cousins. Though, I must admit, knowing who he was, was disruptive. It was like seeing the guy who works at the corner store in a starring role. He's as much your cashier as your mother is your mother. I don't know how people in Hollywood see movies.
Comme d'habitude, Paul Giamatti, who played Cleveland Heep, apartment building superintendent, was fantastic. He seems like the opposite of ego. He's an actor who conveys emptiness miraculously. But also strength and salvation. Nothing else there, other than he makes the film.
Writing this, I think of the film Dogma, that was ripped apart by the critics, but I liked it. It was the otherworldliness that also self-reflected, and winked at the audience. M. Night Shyamalan cannot help winking at the audience. He gives long speeches about what he is doing and he lets us know he knows he's giving long speeches about what he is doing. Though it is the parts that he does not wink, that move the most. The subtlety of showing us the bike room in the basement, reminding us we are still in this world, even is another one has intercepted with ours.
This film was also about being an artist, and the intensity of feeling spoken through. There is one speech his character gives about his thoughts becoming uncluttered that brought me to tears. And what artist wouldn't be?
This film is also about not knowing who we are in the world. We might be special. God might be at our door. Who knows who we are in the grand scheme of things. The older I get, the less I am impressed with this epiphany. When I was ninteen years old, that brought me great comfort. In my thirties, I am more convinced I am the person sitting in front of me. He says we're important, maybe, but only based on the effect we have on those who come after us. When the "lady of the water" tells Shyamalan his future, she talks about his futures rippling effect, more than his present.
What can I conclude. I liked it better than Pirates.
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