BLAIR WOYNARSKI
Arts Writer

I am on a mission: a mission of redemption. In this feature, I have taken on the task of revisiting films from our past that have been widely vilified by viewers, and give them a fair trial, to see if their bad press is truly deserved.

My first subject was an obvious choice.

Lady in the Water was released during an awkward period when M. Night Shyamalan was making the uneasy transition from critically acclaimed director to punchline. He had made three successes in a row, but then his pseudo-period piece The Village flopped, and people anticipated this film, to see if it would set him back on track.

Unfortunately, it was panned. In the years since, its reputation seems to have compounded upon itself, and it is only spoken of in hushed whispers accompanied by derisive laughter.

The plot, for those of you who have forgotten, is that Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), superintendant at a low-income apartment complex, discovers a water nymph named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard) living in the swimming pool.

Story is a visitor from the Blue World who must make contact with a writer in the apartment building, and give him some sort of spiritual awakening that will lead to him publishing a book that changes the world. (The writer is played by none other than Shyamalan himself. Make of that what you will).

With her mission accomplished, she must return to her home in the ocean by hitching a ride with a giant eagle, but her exodus is complicated by a wolf-like creature stalking the grounds that will do whatever it can to kill her. Cleveland must unravel the mystery of an ancient bedtime story in order to figure out how to get her back home.

I am not interested in defending Mr. Shyamalan — I gave up on him after The Happening. But I wanted to give Lady in the Water an honest critical look, because I had always felt the hatred for it was undeserved. I stand by that belief.

The first problem plaguing this movie was one of marketing. Early trailers made it seem like a horror movie, so an audience went in expecting thrills they did not get. This is unfortunate, but in reality, the film was never trying to be a horror; rather, it was a slightly dark fairy tale. Nevertheless, it did deal a reasonable amount of suspense and delivered a few well-placed shock scares that worked well in Signs but failed in The Village.

Other complaints I see a lot are a lack of coherence and poorly developed characters. I understand the point, but I don’t think the criticism is entirely fair. Even the best movies can’t afford to fully realize every character in their casts, and Lady in the Water suffers from having so many characters necessary to the plot that most of them end up being somewhat shallow. The only real problem comes from one or two individuals whose function in the narrative seems to be predicated on information that the audience hasn’t received.

The story progresses in a scattered way, but doing so is effective for the sort of movie it is. It plays around with the conventions of the fairy tale. Rather than everything falling neatly into place, the characters have to work it out as they go along.

The other complaint is the dialogue. Speech often veers toward the awkward and tedious. The biggest crime is probably a supreme lack of subtlety. Shyamalan uses far too many words to explain his story, and at times completely loses sight of the fact that film is a visual medium.

An early scene has Story uncovering Cleveland’s tragic backstory, and then she blurts out exposition that could have been handled much better with fewer words and more images. The same back story is blurted out later, just to remind us that it is there, since it has little consequence on the movie.

A scene at the climax of the movie also employs unnecessary dialogue that would have been rendered useless by a simple movement of the camera (what follows is a jump so peculiar that I am forced to conclude 60 seconds of footage was eaten by a goat).

Smugness also permeates this movie. Shyamalan is still high on his earlier successes and delusional about the poor reception of The Village. The character of the snide movie reviewer appears to say a lot about the director’s own attitude toward critics.

The reviewer is frequently self-referential, complaining about a rom-com in which characters walk around saying their thoughts out loud, which is exactly what happens in Lady in the Water. However, I don’t think the irony is nearly as clever as Shyamalan thinks it is.

There are flaws, certainly. The performances of the lead actors definitely help the movie along, with Paul Giamatti being charming yet racked with inner desperation, and Bryce Dallas Howard beautifully delivering an airiness and disquiet to her water nymph.

The story itself is also well assembled. Shyamalan has a lot of pieces on the board, and, save a couple small faltering, he keeps track of all of them.

There is a very confined atmosphere, never leaving the apartment block; it is kind of reminiscent of Rear Window, where all the inhabitants are involved in their own strange lives, slightly beyond our comprehension. All these disparate people are united by a bedtime story. It is not rational, but why should it be? It does not take place in a full realization of our present society; rather, it is a modern, isolated fairy-tale kingdom.

Lady in the Water will never be great cinema. It probably would have been much better if Shyamalan had let someone else pen the screenplay. But it is far from irredeemably awful. The fact that people skim over is that it’s not just about a fairy tale: it is a fairy tale, with the pitfalls that go along with that. It appeals to the imagination much more so than the intellect. There are plenty of problems with the execution, but at its heart, it is a good story. And with a good story, you can always find redemption.