In defense of bashing M. Night Shyamalan.

I'm sure you are all sick of hearing my rants against M. Night Shyamalan. Yes, you know I think he's been downhill since Signs (Signs included, and I don't just mean a slight decrease of quality, he's crashed into the fucking mountain). Yes, you know the Sixth Sense is slow (and not the Terence Malick good kind of slow but slow as in lacking dramatic tension), ponderous, and cheap thrill scary until the final twist where you say, that doesn't make up for the suckiness of the rest of the movie. It is what it is, a twist. For a better example on how to use a twist ending see Unbreakable (his only good film, and a great one at that) there is a twist in which the story that preceeded it is cast in a new light. The twist makes it a different movie, a better one. And since most of the people who read this blog are out here in Idaho, I imagine this will come as no surprise to the two (maybe three) other people who read this thing.

Regardless, the reason for this is I wish to write a response to two (yes, two) articles I have read in the "prestigious" village voice and Slate.com both titled "in defense of M. Night Shyamalan. I thought to myself, why does he deserve a defense? What has he done to warrant this kind of heedless admiration from a publication as notoriously cynically impossible-to-please as the village voice? I'm sure you will all roll your eyes at this comparison but when Revenge of the Sith came out, even people who loved the movie went out of their way to tear George Lucas a new one (except for A.O. Scott of the New York Times, he's a certifiable hero). Since I've been basically writing a long defense of George Lucas article ever since this blog began, I need to point out that Lucas (and countless other filmmakers) have done what Shyamalan's done. Except they (Lucas etc) celebrate the sharing of their myths. Shyamalan celebrates himself as the creator of them. For further evidence, anyone who doubts Lucas as a director obviously watch Star Wars. But pay important attention to THX-1138 and American Graffiti as examples of a director who can impress a distinct visual style on two very different works of film.

Anyway, before I try to stuff 8 billion blog entries into one. Let me present some of the "evidence" in the Slate.com article and then present a few counterpoints to these claims.

"But Shyamalan's missteps have been interesting, his mistakes worth a second look, and his obsession with the integrity of his own artistic visions, however irritating, has distinguished him from nearly all his young-Hollywood competitors."

Ross Douthat (the writer) makes a fair point that a bloated ego and incomparable self love don't necessarily equal a filmmaker without vision, talent, or intelligence. My response to that is, narcissism does hurt a filmmaker when he allows his talent to become a showcase for it. His films become an excuse for his greatness, as Shyamalan's films do, not the passion that inspired them . Examine how his twists talk down to the audience, it becomes a sadistic game of simultaneously egging the audience on to figure it out by promising one and then slapping them down when you pull the rug out from under them with the twists of all twists. When this happens, your twists are the story and there is nothing else to the movie worth watching. Not exactly the mark of a good storyteller as Shyamalan wishes the masses to proclaim him. Shyamalan gets off on deception, on proving he can out wit his audience with trick-less tricks. If David Blaine were a filmmaker, he's be Night's best bud. But twists aren't the only problem with his films, there are more sinister forces at work here defending his garbage. Check this one out...

"It's worth comparing Shyamalan's career choices, for instance, with those of Bryan Singer...Singer has essentially reinvented himself as a director of comic-book blockbusters, a man to be trusted with massive budgets and well-known franchises. He's been making movies for the studios, in other words, instead of doing what Shyamalan has tried to do—which is to persuade the studios to make movies for him."

"But this path comes with a price. You find yourself making sequels and franchise pictures rather than finding (or writing) new and unusual stories of your own...Shyamalan, by contrast, doesn't make sequels or franchises (he turned down a chance to script Indiana Jones IV). He doesn't adapt Dan Brown best sellers, or Robert Ludlum potboilers, or Disney theme-park rides. He doesn't rely on CGI, or even use it much."

I don't know wear to begin with this shit. First of all, Douthat calls Gore Verbinski versatile and talented. I guess that's how well you can gauge his abilitiy to judge talent. Second of all, just because you come up with original stories, doesn't mean they are any good. They can suck just as much or more than comic books or adaptations. I'm not bemoaning Shyamalan for sticking to his own material (we need more of it these days) I just think it's a massive stretch to ultimately label every thing that pops out of his brain gold. Shyamalan may write original screenplays, but he definitely follows a formula that's as tried and true as any brand name (in fact his films do come with a brand-name, ever notice his name above the goddamn title?) And this goes far beyond the twist ending bullshit I talked about earlier. All of his films are about ordinary men over come with some sort of inconceivable grief, who, through the power of the supernatural (and Shyamalan's self proclaimed story telling brilliance) find their way back to redemption and learn how to be better men through an acceptance of faith and belief. A certain kind of creepy christian domination is certainly none-too-subtle in some of his films, no wonder he and Mel got along so well. Now I understand that there is such a thing as a common theme uniting a director's body of work, but there is a serious difference between that and telling the same goddamn story every single time. Shyamalan's films don't represent a constant drive to understand the human condition, they represent a filmmaker high on his own gas, unable to come up with anything else. If you notice, nothing different ever happens to that thematic line. He never strives for a variation on it, he's content with setting em up and knocking em down every single time. I say that impulse, rather than a willingness to work with someone else's material indicates a death of originality. Shyamalan sold out to his own shit a long time ago. Also I believe the reason Shyamalan sticks to his own scripts all the time is because he doesn't think another writer is capable of topping or even countering his vision of cinematic prowess. Also, a personal note, if I hear one more so-called film theorist proclaim someone a genius because he or she doesn't use CGI. I'll let you fill in that blank.

"Shyamalan seems to be aiming for something, amid our summers of high-grossing superhero movies and our winters of little-seen Oscar-bait projects, that's increasingly rare these days: a marriage of entertainment and art, of mass-market tastes and elite sensibilities... So, Shyamalan deserves credit, despite his vanity and his missteps—not because he's succeeding, necessarily, but because he's willing to keep trying and unwilling to take his place with those timid, highly compensated directors who know neither victory nor defeat."

It's interesting how certain critics foam at the mouth when they get the ability to trash a film by Spike Lee, Oliver Stone, or even someone like Steven Spielberg. Because those are three directors (among others), who never make boring films. They always have a certain creative stamp that bears the mark of someone who is always exploring, always pushing the limits of his or her talents. And while crash and burn they sometimes do, I have yet to see a collection of articles such as these making an attempt to justify these failures. They often use the films they hate as impetus to suggest that "this" is proof that these directors never had any talent to begin with, or have subtly lost it along the way. People let Shyamalan off the hook with the greatest of ease. Possibly because unlike Lee and Stone, Shyamalan never says anything that pisses people off the way those two do. But beyond that, it's the one part of the Slate article, that I can't figure out. Why do people let Shyamalan off with such an easy pass when his movies have so obviously sucked the past couple of years? In the words of Elliott Smith, I don't think I'm ever gonna figure it out.

P.S. I wrote most of this while watching The Thin Red Line, which only added to my venom. People call Shyamalan a born filmmaker, no, Terence Malick is a born filmmaker. It's not even worth a comparison, but I need a good dose of Malick to offset this Shyamalanonsense. But you should all watch The Thin Red Line. It's fucking amazing.


Here is the slate article. Check it out if you feel I mis-represented it.

That's about enough...

"I need some sleep
Time to put the old horse down
I'm in too deep
And the wheels keep spinning 'round
Everyone says I'm getting' down too low
Everyone says you just gotta let it go
You just gotta let it go
You just gotta let it go

You just gotta let it go"