SOUNDS SILLY: but it’s easy to get sucked into Story’s story.
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I was really afraid Lady in the Water was going to suck. There’s the whole precious “bedtime story” conceit. Plus Michael Bamberger’s fascinating new book about the making of the movie that portrays M. Night Shyamalan in an alternately flattering and damning light, as both misunderstood visionary and petty egotist. As it turns out, the movie does not suck. That’s not much of a blurb quote, but it’s all the enthusiasm I could muster up.
Like Shyamalan’s other films, this one is full of fascinating but half-chewed ideas told in a form that even a child (with a high tolerance for creepy chills) can grasp. Grown-ups may be fascinated but will probably be left wanting more.
Shyamalan’s unlikely hero is Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), an apartment super who secretly (like most Shyamalan heroes) carries a burden of inconsolable loss. One night, he discovers an otherworldly young woman thrashing about in the apartment complex’s outdoor pool. She turns out to be Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), a sea nymph called a “narf” who’s trapped and unable to return to the “blue world” whence she came.
Cleveland will ultimately learn that the fate of narfs is governed by a complicated fairy-tale mythology whose rules are clear but whose players remain vague. (There are also monsters: the “Scrunt” and the “Tartutic.”) To solve Story’s riddle, Cleveland will enlist most of the tenants in the building. “Every being has a purpose,” she says, and part of the purpose is to figure out what one’s purpose is.
Sounds silly, maybe, but it’s easy to get sucked into Story’s story. Everyone Cleveland tells listens with the open mind of a child; no one tells him he’s nutty. The lone closed-minded tenant is Farber, a film critic (apparently named after the great Manny F.), who assumes he knows all the rules and conventions of narrative and consequently dispenses bad advice that gets everyone into deep trouble.
On the other hand, there’s a tenant named Vick (played by Shyamalan himself, in one of his most prominent roles to date) whom Story inspires to finish writing a manifesto that she assures him will one day change the world. Uh oh. Shyamalan’s screenplays often suggest a realm beyond ordinary human experience, a world one can touch only through faith. (What kind of faith? Doesn’t matter.) That’s fine, but here the allegory curdles into a sour fable about a maligned writer (Shyamalan) and the critics who don’t appreciate his genius (why so much hate for The Village and Unbreakable?). Dude, get over yourself.
Besides, allegorical figures are hard to play. Howard does her best, but the role requires her to remain an enigma, angelic but unfathomable. Bob Balaban, too, has been directed to play Farber as a caricature. The usually seething Giamatti, however, taps a reservoir of deep pain in the movie’s key scene. And the other tenants, particularly crossword enthusiast Jeffrey Wright and haphazard bodybuilder Freddy Rodriguez, display flashes of life.
At least the patented Shyamalan twist ending is absent this time. The story, with all its red herrings, is twisty enough. Besides, you can dip into that pool only so many times.