ONE BIZARRE EVENING WITH

LADY IN THE WATER

*This review contains spoilers*

Whatever loony air that surrounded the release of Lady In The Water, diffused in a split after my first experience at home. Regrettably, I’d missed it in cinema halls. The demented critics, hailing it conveniently as the worst film since a long time, had definitely suspended audience’s participation. I have my own reasons concerning critics panning down an immersive film, solely independent of its kind (Candid reasons). I wouldn’t be going down this essay by tagging it to be an independent art feature, capacitating its elite group. There’s much to this film, in small amounts, yet in a big way. Let me start transcribing my thoughts on the kind of film this is. It is substantially a subjective view that I’d be pressing, slimming down any judgemental take on it. As I’d like to purport, my reason to write about this wonderful film is to glitter my experience, of watching it back and again. I wouldn’t be attempting to garner shine for the film, nor to boast praises galore. It is my feisty attempt to heal what’s been scarred, restoring it to the genuine experience this movie cherishes. Just so that this very particular film, doesn’t end up in a ditch, before being revived in some late future (If luck be).

What is so magnificent about Lady In The Water is that it topples across many script layers, heavily relying on the confidence of Shyamalan (not conundrum). The movie renders through the reliance of Shyamalan on much improvisation and free style. Shyamalan mentions in one of his interviews prior to the release of Lady In The Water about the quality of result that exudes, if gone through improvisation and free style. He explains on it by adding that free style could only be sincerely garnered, if the purveyor is strongly associated with the material he wants to express. That strong emotion, translates (effective or not), into an example, very much like Lady In The Water. The script of the film is infectious. It leaps out originality in heaps. Taking a loosely based idea of a bedtime story, that wavers in itself across the thin thread of prospect, and adding a mixture of ideas, emotions, humor, horror, and sublimating into a central aspect of hope is indeed an illustrious affair. Whether it works or not, lies on the viewer’s experience. I could almost warrant the whole film of being one of the most originally executed films amongst many bearers. 

Before unveiling the film from my perspective, I’d like to sketch the plot of the film. In Lady in the Water, a lonely apartment manager Cleveland Heep (played by Paul Giamatti)- who was a doctor until his life was devasted by the murder of his wife and children- is redeemed through his attempts to rescue and protect a lovely female visitor- a “narf” named Story- who has been sent from “Blue World” to kindle an awakening amongst humans. To remind them of the right path. In the process, Heep, who is a stutterer, is required to communicate with the residents of “The Cove” apartment, to organize a rescue party. Heep struggles to fit in the incomplete knowledge and misleading information of an ancient story, unhelpfully augmented by an arrogant film critic (Bob Balaban). Another barrier to this hopeful reckoning is the lack of morale played by key characters, including Heep and Story herself. Vick (played by Shyamalan) reveals himself to be the “vessel”, a purveyor to Story’s muse, who is destined to write a book that will inspire a future U.S. leader in bringing out a positive change. The members of the Heep’s rescue party work together in overcoming false roles, waiting for the pre-ordained fate to play out. With supernatural beings called “tartutics”, maintaining order in the Blue World, hyena like creature called “scrunt” attempting to bring down the narf, to the Great Eatlon- a giant eagle- carrying the narf back to the Blue World. Just before she leaves, Heep and Story embrace and he thanks her for saving his life.

The strong point of this film is in the outlandishly fine performance of Paul Giamatti, playing the character of Cleveland Heep, reminding me of a very brilliant performance of Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. I believe that Paul Giamatti’s performance in this film is one of the very best I’ve seen in movies. I’d like to talk about the believability of the plot of this film, which critics had trouble to chew with. The film’s plot, if angled linearly, snaps off in the middle. In fact, it doesn’t play out at all. However, the film ricochets many delicate themes deliberately being put into the equation, posing to be a fitting piece. It is an honor in genre filmmaking that is rare as any film in its time. The cinematography by Christopher Doyle is dabbed in brilliant camerawork. It is splendidly enacted into an effective witty script, filled with euphemisms, quirky remarks, grey scale of humor, repeated information, spoon fed dialogues, sharp plot twists, whimsical drama, jarred mockery, all serving this potboil brew as a drift surging spiritedly from Shyamalan. It is definitely an expression to his unvented emotion, which is ringing loud through the film. Originality exists in today’s world. Upon reflecting, the film is a beautiful story of acceptance and hope, flailing against the cheeky thrill element. The characters in the film are certainly ready to believe Story, almost spontaneously. The plot builds on the journey from finding the person, who’s a purveyor of positive change in the world (Shyamalan himself), to getting Story back to her world against many odds, discovering in herself a new facet.

Shyamalan forces us to learn many aspects of the myth that drives the story from a hip Korean college girl and incoherent interviews of her mother to the Story’s sign language. Critical parts of the film are relayed from Vick’s sister to Heep. In a similar way, members of the rescue party are provided inaccurate roles through stereotypical story conventions provided by the film critic. The point of the myth is that “no one is ever told who they are,” the student explains to Heep at one point. My favorite bit is the part where a man chosen as an “Interpreter” finally realizes that he has been miscast over his son, who reads significant, yet bewildering feelings in cereal box artworks. And Heep, who at first was mis-identified as Story’s guardian, is revealed to be her Healer. There’s an interesting exchange between Cleveland Heep and the film critic Mr. Harper (Bob Balaban), in the pool side scene, where Mr. Harper blurts his frustration from watching a romantic film saying “Characters were walking around, saying their thoughts out loud. Who does that? And in a typical romance where the couple finally tell each other they love one another in the rain. Why does everyone like to stand around and talk in the rain in movies?” In a beat, Heep replies, “well maybe it's a metaphor for purification; starting new.” To which Mr. Farber states “No. It’s not.” This exchange reflects the critic's automated gutted manner about things, against the bona fide view of a folk. Later on in the film, the gutted Mr. Farber is murdered in a hysterical fashion, reading out his recorded monologue at the time (Ring any bells! Backlashing critics, maybe. A wee bit?). There is a strange element of resolution in the story: while Vick is clearly identified as the writer whose works will be influential, it is Cleveland whose journals about his murdered family are actually read by Story, deeply affecting her.

Another interesting fragment in Lady in the Water is that every image of television that is glimpsed in the film is an image of past or present wars. That seems a bit simplistic. In his mythic story, humans don’t listen to the right voices in themselves when they seek an answer. The film, to me, provided an intriguing experience unlike any other fantasy film. The themes conveyed in this film resonate powerfully and boldly. It certainly touches upon many core ideas and beliefs of Shyamalan, considering he narrated this tale to his children as a bedtime story. The film feels obscure on its surface, yet embodies a vast experience, that seems singularly universal. It almost seems like a kinky exercise, that tresses through a rarefied manner of filmmaking. I personally believe that had the film been made by a pygmy, far out director from some remote eastern european town, it would have reaped praises for its esoteric structure, or (you-name-some-fancy-bubble). If not admired, it would have at least passed as a running-the-mill independent affair, or averted rotten critique. Why choose Shyamalan? Critic character vis-a-vis past history of his films? Bearing a twist-ending calculation for all of his films? Or an honest appraisal? Lady in the Water  treads into many untried and outlandish methods of narrative and execution, that profusely strikes as a flamboyant filmmaking ride. All the bustling hurried manner of the story comes from its tagline- “Time is running out for a happy ending.” 

HOWL

Allen Ginsberg’s infamous work, working up the lather during Beat Generation

HOWL imbibes on the legacy of Allen Ginsberg’s signal work. It is an insightful fusion of documentary, drama and animated filmmaking that calls for the exploration of his ceremonial poem Howl, one that needed to burst through the traditional patterns as a documentary to express everything on its mind. The urge that would have beseeched Allen Ginsberg through Howl would be agonizingly strong. Imagine what bull would it be back in 1956, to be discussing the artistic merits of his work, or any other work for its own sake. The musical question of the time, “Who is to say what is or is not art or literature?” The 1957 trial that put Ginsberg’s publisher on trial for obscenity seems nothing short of a mockery in this age. Yet, the “so seemed trivial” nature of the trial now had grave importance, dealing in larger issues of censorship and democracy. 

The trial faced by Ginsberg’s publisher reminds me of the account of censorship that had taken place in India during British Raj. Some arrogant Act was implemented by the British Raj, after India had begun using the theatre as a protest tool against their colonial rule. I guess the same alarm might have struck the cultural era of Allen Ginsberg’s time, only now the tool to be functioned as a voice hurling against the American constitution. 

The infamous prosecutor in the 1957 obscenity trial argues that the language used by Ginsberg is “filthy, vulgar and disgusting”. Howl certainly imbibes a whole lot of filthy, disgusting, obscene language in its verses, but to illustrious use in regard to his themes. The words Ginsberg cast are fluent, raunchy, and edible. It certainly holds power and gravitas, regardless of its artistic merit. The role of this infamous trial seems very much like the first decisive break from the coherent postwar years, closely followed by the hippie generation of the 60’s. I liked the fact the trial bore the attention to how uncomfortable and clueless the prosecutor (David Strathairn) is with the substance of Howl, he’s sometimes forced to recite in court.

Ginsberg’s form of poetry was much like an ode to the society. Imagine the spur knotted in his stomach, the blood-thirsty urge of etching out words, expressions, statements, oozing out of him, raping the question of “decency” over honesty. I imagine whether the movie would have sustained without the phantasmagorical effect of its animated visuals, candidly being supplied to superimpose the poetry’s excessive themes. The film dives into his life, his experiences that made him a poet, without dragging it into mindset. It is more than a biopic, or maybe less. Its about the ways the literature works on the reader, and the idiocy of applying “your objective standard of meaning” to its page.

The film overlays four pieces of the exploration of Howl. There’s Allen Ginsberg(James Franco) in his rich, smoky black and white palette, reeling out his poem in a coffeehouse, and friendships with other Beats as Jack Kerouac. Then there’s the 1957 trial- shot straightforwardly as a standard courtroom drama. Thirdly, there’s the interview with an unseen journalist, with Ginsberg talking about his life and Howl. Lastly, there are animated segments, which provide occasionally too-literal backdrop to verses from the poem. But eventually, I think, the movie does not aim to be recollected or acknowledged in its full sense. But rather felt in its glorified visuals, often needed to be realized. 

We see Ginsberg, played by James Franco with restraint and care, to be uncertain about many things. His confusion about his sexuality, filled with the heady joy of early poetic success bears certain weight into Howl’s themes. There is one verse from “Howl” that I very much realized it. Or so to speak. The Beats created poetry, art, and music, but most of all, they created Goliath of themselves- “Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night”. Allen Ginsberg, with his horn-rimmed glasses and young face, certainly appears far less of an angelheaded hipster destroyed by madness. Maybe, he honed to be one. His writing is feisty, and filled with piping hot expressions like “who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,” 

We get glimpses of Ginsberg’s early days as a poet, including his relationship with Kerouac and Cassady, as well as representation of the trial, where a parade of critics and literature professors articulate his work to be either genius or utter bullshit. Filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman choose to illustrate the burning imagination of Ginsberg with an “overheated student film” like animation. 

The film “Howl” gradually lights Ginsberg’s reluctance in having his great early poem published, as he wasn’t eager to have his daddy find out his personal form, such that he was homosexual. All of the biographical part of the film is wisely crafted. The Orlovsky scenes focus more on idealized romance. The interview scenes are mainly about clarification of his work and how Ginsberg felt it be perceived. He admits, among many other things, to his fear of his poet father’s reaction to his work and his personal space; his mother’s schizophrenic illness; his sexual infatuations; and his view that Howl was not a promotion of the merits of homosexuality, as some perceived, but rather an argument about “frankness for any subject”

Howl laid central importance to the betrayal of American democracy, which Ginsberg riddled in euphemisms, and also free versed about the importance of erotic experience. In his personal life, Ginsberg was a practicing Buddhist and also studied other Eastern religious disciplines. His association with great teachers like the Tibetan Buddhist, “Chogyum Rinpoche” were famous. Through the 60’s, Ginsberg started being involved with Krishnaism, greeting Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of Hare Krishna movement in the west.

The film Howl expertly brings to us the shade of Ginsberg, behind his extensive piece of work, delicately handled by the filmmakers through the use of funky story-telling, and effective dramatization of the courtroom sequence, which is the core beat of the film.