As of the third of July The Last Airbender, M Night Shyamalan's latest film, has an 8% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 109 reviews and opened to $16 million in the US.
What the hell happened? Eleven years ago Shyamalan gave us the Oscar nominated The Sixth Sense, a film which instantly became a global phenomenon and went on to earn just over $670 million worldwide. Has there ever been a career trajectory quite like this before? In 1999 Shyamalan was being called the next Hitchcock, eleven years later and some people are arguing he doesn't even have a career left. It's an astonishing notion and it's desperately disappointing to see this once exciting filmaker's work decline so rapidly.
Here's the thing though. The Sixth Sense wasn't a fluke. It is a tremendous film and remains a powerfully effective thriller and a showcase for a director with a serious understanding of cinema and film making. The film is so much more than that twist, it's a beautiful film, perfectly paced and to this day terrifying. A film as well crafted as that doesn't happen by accident. It fully deserves it's place in cinematic history. And it's not like Shyamalan is a one hit wonder either, his second film, while not as well received as it's predecessor was a success. In fact, Unbreakable suffered only from being released too soon. Had it been released during the current superhero boom maybe it would have had a far warmer reception. It's an intriguing film, a superhero movie disguised as a psychological thriller. Unbreakable is a fascinating alternative look at the mythology of superheroes and a wonderful example of the now stale "origin" movie.
His next films, Signs and The Village, both come agonisingly close to being perfect but are sabotaged by their climaxes. Each film relies on and delivers a building sense of danger and dread. Signs, in particular, cranks up the tension at a masterful pace, slowly ratcheting up the fear and paranoia (I swear, in the cinema, the birthday party scene scared me witless). The Village too is a gorgeous film, a haunting period piece that teases something dark and sinister in the night, it's more unsettling than scary but delivers the chills. The problem both have is they almost completely fall down at the end. Signs throws in a plot device so convenient it makes Indy's nuke proof fridge look clever and The Village contains a twist so awful it neuters the film completely on subsequent viewings. Even so, despite those almost crippling script issues there was no denying Shyamalan's talent as a director, it was his writing that was the problem.
Lady in the Water is where the knives started to come out. "The Emperor has no clothes" some critics gleeful declared. Across the board the film was rejected. Understandably rejected, Lady in the Water is a very tough film to sell. It's a fairytale for adults, I get that, in fact I love that idea. To take something innocent and make it frightening is a hallmark of good horror. My problem with Lady in the Water is not what it tried to do, it's that it didn't do it well enough. Again, the film certainly looks the part and while it sets up it's premise well Shyamalan over indulges himself to a maddening degree. He cast himself as a man whose "writing would save the world" and included a scene where a mean old film critic is mauled to death by a monster. The film would have to be transcendent for that kind of nonsense to fly, it wasn't. But while I wasn't a huge fan of Lady in Water I at least admired it as a labour of love and I remained firmly on board with the Director.
Then The Happening happened and I gave up completely. If in years to come Shyamalan admits that he intentionally made a terrible film as a middle finger to his critics I would believe him. From top to bottom The Happening is a disaster. At least Lady in the Water had conviction and passion, a sense that the director was involved in some way, The Happening showed us a director who was barely treading water. Gone were the meticulously framed shots, the subtlety and the palpable tension, instead we have hideous dialogue, career worst acting from just about everyone involved and Mark Wahlberg running from the wind.
And now we have The Last Airbender a film universally panned, not for it's forced twist or being over indulgent, but simply for being a very badly made film.
Where does Shyamalan go from here? He has a project in development at the moment but what then? The Media Man is convinced that he will churn out the long rumoured Unbreakable sequel and I think he's absolutely right, he needs to remind people where he came from. It was clear years ago that Shyamalan is a far stronger Director than he is writer, but with The Last Airbender it would seem he isn't comfortable directing something he didn't create. Shyamalan needs to be very, very careful about where he goes from here. He needs to evaluate his own skill set and figure out what is going wrong because his films aren't working anymore. I do think that his name still has some cache, it was plastered all over The Last Airbender and I think it will be all over his next, but another flop will sink him. I'm not writing him off just yet, but being an M. Night Shyamalan apologist is getting incredibly difficult.
1 comments:
I've no doubt that when you wrote this, you knew I'd have something to chime in with.
Firstly, I hear many people are over-reacting to Last Airbender. But for so many people to do so, there has to be something terribly wrong. As a fan of the cartoon (which it is; it's not animé...it's a cartoon in the style of animé), I hold out and hope. Either way, I think we should ignore Last Airbender until we've judged for ourselves.
Every film that M. Night releases has me clamouring to see it the first day it's out. if no one wants to come with me? So what, I see it on my own. That's devotion to a film maker if I ever saw it! But it's getting harder to justify. The Happening made me regret I'd even paid to see it.
The Happening was apparently meant to play like a b-movie. Problem was, it didn't. Chuck it in B&W and go for it if that's the case. Really ham everything up. Unfortunately, we know there's talent in the director's chair and we KNOW that he can do better. He didn't go whole hog with making that b-movie, so it became a normal movie with some awful acting and story. It's easy to see where it went wrong.
Lady in the Water is something I have to disagree with you on. Whilst I don't love the film as much as I used to, the things you point out are the signs that Shyamalan is a hugely personal filmmaker. That's his charm, I think. He cast himself as the writer who inspires people because he hopes his films will inspire people. I think it's a logical step and he did just fine in it (not winning awards, but no where near the terrible actor Tarantino is...the 'quietness' in Shyamalans films seem to play into his lack of ability I think). As for the film critic: completely justified. It's a kind of ironic thing to put in the film too because the film critic does get proven correct by the end of the story. Any filmmaker that is making films because it flows in their very veins (Cameron, Nolan, Hitchcock, Lynch, Kubrick, Spielberg etc) have uber personal things in their films. They're expressions of themselves (whether they agree with that expression is another thing entirely..I guess we could say that they're exercising expressions curious to them). The film critic was merely Shyamalans expression of 'what the hell do you know?!' (remember, he'd just come off a pretty panned film and had been critics whipping boy for a good few years). it's childish sure, but it's their. Pixar have the same character disguised as a food critic in Ratatouille (however, they handle the character with perfection).
All the others, I agree with. If anything, The Village (and most other films of his actually) were victims of mis-marketing the film.
Unbreakable would undoubtedly be praised as hugely original and brilliant if it was released now. I think in the current climate of cinema, it'd make sense to do the sequel (after all, he's had the basic story for the trilogy running in his head now for a long while...well, whatever remnants remain from the scrapped 2nd and 3rd part of the original script anyhow).
I'm the apologist btw, not you. As far as I can remember, you've always been pretty doubtful in our discussions of Shyamalan since Signs. I've been the one begging you not to leg go of him.
In Summary, Shyamalan needs to let go and direct someone else's script. This 'air of enigma' he creates around himself is no longer doing him any good at all. He's making films out of love, that much is clear. It's a shame then that he's forgotten what it takes to make a a brilliant film.
p.s: I wonder if Shyamalan was the right choice for Airbender? His slow, static shots and plodding pace of films really doesn't serve an action film too well??
Post a Comment
Do you think what I've said is load of old bollocks? Please let me know.