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By David Fear and James Rocchi
Special to MSN Movies
With plenty of advance buzz and controversy surrounding the release of M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" -- his first R-rated film, as the ads keep
drilling home (and ... so what?), and his first release since the critically
mocked "Lady in the Water" -- we asked two film writers to duke it
out over the polarizing writer/director of "The Sixth Sense" and "Signs." Is Shyamalan a simplistic twist-crazed
egomaniac/hack or a real talent who still might surprise us? Let's read the
arguments.
David Fear: Once upon a time ...
A young man dreamed of being a filmmaker. He shot Super-8 films in his
backyard with his cousins as both cast and crew. His first professional project
left him bitter: He had to deal with Rosie O'Donnell and Harvey Weinstein -- shudder -- in 1998's "Wide Awake," so you can't blame him. After the latter took
the film -- his film -- away, Shyamalan vowed he'd never let that happen again.
So he worked on a script about a child therapist and a troubled boy who, it
seems, saw dead people. The filmmaker sold it on the condition that he also
direct. He made the movie his way. The studio had modest expectations, figuring
it wouldn't lose any money.
Here comes the twist: The film wasn't just a hit; it was a freakin'
pop-cultural phenomenon. People quoted the movie and debated the ending. The
dream came true. The man had become a star. Not "the end," but rather, the
beginning ...
The meteoric rise of M. Night Shyamalan from another faceless Directors Guild
of America member to the pantheon of popcorn auteurs after the runaway success
of "The Sixth Sense" (1999) was astounding, albeit worrisome. The 29-year-old
director made a truly impressive movie but also regurgitated his own hype and
treated himself as the second coming of Hitchcock. It smacked of obnoxious,
unearned egomania.
After Newsweek put Shyamalan on its cover and declared him "the new Spielberg," the young director allegedly called the veteran
filmmaker and said that even if the magazine didn't know any better, he did.
What's more telling was his statement at the time to Premiere, in which
Shyamalan declared that upon meeting Spielberg, he finally felt as if he'd met
someone who was a peer. Oh, really? This, more than anything else, may have
marked the beginning of the end.
James Rocchi: Dave, I'm not going to paint M. Night
Shyamalan as an unparalleled genius whose every film is a pure success; however,
at the same time, I do think that Shyamalan's films after "The Sixth Sense" each
have something going for them that not only elevates them above the shabby,
sloppy stupidity of most genre films but also makes them worth watching. ("The
Lady in the Water," of course, being the notable exception.)
Let me ask you this, Dave: If you were headed out to the movies for a few
scares and a couple hours of artificially induced anxiety, would you rather go
see a new film from Eli Roth ("Hostel") or Shyamalan?? And sure, although Shyamalan's
consistently worked with his own scripts, wouldn't you say that his work is more
ambitious and relevant than that of another self-celebrating writer-director
such as Kevin Smith?
But Shyamalan's not just better than a few straw-men examples; in the
competent execution of his modest ambitions, he's actually quite good. I'll
argue that "The Sixth Sense" is memorable for much more than just the film's
twist; as conceptually brilliant as the movie is (it perfectly exploits the
rules, signifiers and assumptions of how the movies depict everyday life), it
ultimately endures because we believe in the characters. Think about the
film-closing conversation between Haley Joel Osment's haunted boy and his confused,
apprehensive mother, Toni Collette; that's not just better writing and acting
than most horror films, that's better writing and acting than most films,
period. That kind of ability and skill, not the twist-and-trick structure, is
the real touch Shyamalan brings to what he does -- and why he's worth watching.
David Fear: You are right about "The Sixth Sense," James: It
does hold up surprisingly well. The scene you mentioned, in fact, is actually a
great example of how the young director understood the power of dramatic
modulation. The sequence's impact comes from Night's effective use of speaking
pauses and silences; it's a great example of less-is-more filmmaking, and one of
the last times such dynamism shows up in his things-that-go-bump-in-the-psyche
campfire tales.
But asking whether I'd rather watch Shyamalan's movies than those of Smith,
Roth et al. is a little like asking whether I'd prefer to be punched in the nose
or kicked in the groin; the lesser of evils is preferable, thanks, but perhaps
there's a less painful option available? These writers and directors weren't the
one that Newsweek compared him to, James, and although you can't blame Shyamalan
for that headline, you can take him to task for treating such statements as if
they weren't that far off the mark. He's sold his post-"Sense" films as if they
weren't just entertainment worth thinking about but deep wisdom delivered from
the mountaintop.
Both off-putting narcissism and pseudo-profound artistic pretensions are
instantly forgiven if the filmmaker uses those factors to fuel entertaining,
insightful, thrilling movies. But those two factors began to color what he was
putting on the screen in the worst possible way. Starting with "Unbreakable" (2000), a pattern of diminishing returns began
to take hold. The restraint and keen attention to atmosphere, the facility with
actors and the ability to merge form and content started to give way to
Shyamalan building himself as a brand name. Movies like the aliens-are-among-us
parable "Signs" (2002) and his paranoid-android of a post-Sept. 11 allegory, "The Village" (2004), were technically proficient and yet
totally empty of anything but bumper-sticker platitudes; the latter movie's
po-faced messages about hope and community resembled a civics lesson being
delivered by a precocious, politically uninformed preteen. (Story Continues On Next Page...) |
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