Lady in the Water
Water.
Too much of it can make you sick. Take me for example. After that blatantly incongruous birthday celebration held in Malabon, where we had to battle with the typhoon FLorita and dubious looking brackish floods within the vicinity, I landed myself a stuffed nose, bleeding raw throat from coughs and the occasional fever once every three days.
Yes. A week after the big bang celebration (which turned into the big booboo), I am still sick. I keep hacking up green mucus (disgusting, I know), and talking and standing up makes me nauseated. Last night, I had a fever again.
But I'm not as depressed as I ought to be because I treated my poor, sick self to a movie. And just like a druggie, I can't get enough of water. Fittingly, I watched M. Night Shymalan's Lady in the Water.
Shivering from the cold and whatnot, I sat in my seat with a glazed look in my eyes. It did not lift until after the movie has ended. Yes, I have heard not so favorable reviews about this film, but my opinion is: It's just right up my alley. After all, I'm just a little girl inside, who loves bedtime stories.
The story is about a middle-aged building manager Cleveland Heep who found a water nymph in the pool. The nymph, which in the movie was called a narf, is trying to seek out the writer who she was supposed to inspire. The writer was portrayed by M. himself (I was surprised to realize the guy's actually handsome in a dark-Prince-of-India way.) After seeing the writer, she was supposed to go back to their Blue World. Unfortunately, there was a big bad wolf determined to kill her. So what Cleveland does is to rally up the tenants of the apartments to help the little narf go home.
Talking about it now, I find it quite silly. Logic tells me, the movie does not make any sense. The critic in me cringes at every idiosyncracy made apparent on-screen: the noisy, screechy Chinese girl and her mother, the stereotypical Latinos and Brits, the simply slow flow of the movie, not to mention the disjointed presentation of the fabricated mythology. It tells me, this is not a good movie. But I am terminally biased about Shyamalan's movies. The six-year-old in me likes them a lot. The twelve year-old in me thinks he's a genius. The 24-year-old in me can only sense the magic that I am sure I would have seen if I were any younger and less jaded. I pick up on the eerie, magical things he's scattered throughout his films and I understand what he's trying to say.
He's saying Believe.
Critics say that the only genius of this director is creating hype. They are right. Whether or not M. is a supernaturally-aware person, he's taken the stuff out of stories and made them watchable for today's audiences. And since hype is the only way you could get people to listen nowadays, he uses it as his medium for advocacy.
The film is not for everyone. Those looking for the usual wham-bam-glitter of the blockbuster movies would not find it here. Shyamalan antagonists would have a field day throwing rotten tomatoes at this one.
But if you can watch a movie just for the story, if you love the night and the water...
risk your heart on this one.
Too much of it can make you sick. Take me for example. After that blatantly incongruous birthday celebration held in Malabon, where we had to battle with the typhoon FLorita and dubious looking brackish floods within the vicinity, I landed myself a stuffed nose, bleeding raw throat from coughs and the occasional fever once every three days.
Yes. A week after the big bang celebration (which turned into the big booboo), I am still sick. I keep hacking up green mucus (disgusting, I know), and talking and standing up makes me nauseated. Last night, I had a fever again.
But I'm not as depressed as I ought to be because I treated my poor, sick self to a movie. And just like a druggie, I can't get enough of water. Fittingly, I watched M. Night Shymalan's Lady in the Water.
Shivering from the cold and whatnot, I sat in my seat with a glazed look in my eyes. It did not lift until after the movie has ended. Yes, I have heard not so favorable reviews about this film, but my opinion is: It's just right up my alley. After all, I'm just a little girl inside, who loves bedtime stories.
The story is about a middle-aged building manager Cleveland Heep who found a water nymph in the pool. The nymph, which in the movie was called a narf, is trying to seek out the writer who she was supposed to inspire. The writer was portrayed by M. himself (I was surprised to realize the guy's actually handsome in a dark-Prince-of-India way.) After seeing the writer, she was supposed to go back to their Blue World. Unfortunately, there was a big bad wolf determined to kill her. So what Cleveland does is to rally up the tenants of the apartments to help the little narf go home.
Talking about it now, I find it quite silly. Logic tells me, the movie does not make any sense. The critic in me cringes at every idiosyncracy made apparent on-screen: the noisy, screechy Chinese girl and her mother, the stereotypical Latinos and Brits, the simply slow flow of the movie, not to mention the disjointed presentation of the fabricated mythology. It tells me, this is not a good movie. But I am terminally biased about Shyamalan's movies. The six-year-old in me likes them a lot. The twelve year-old in me thinks he's a genius. The 24-year-old in me can only sense the magic that I am sure I would have seen if I were any younger and less jaded. I pick up on the eerie, magical things he's scattered throughout his films and I understand what he's trying to say.
He's saying Believe.
Critics say that the only genius of this director is creating hype. They are right. Whether or not M. is a supernaturally-aware person, he's taken the stuff out of stories and made them watchable for today's audiences. And since hype is the only way you could get people to listen nowadays, he uses it as his medium for advocacy.
The film is not for everyone. Those looking for the usual wham-bam-glitter of the blockbuster movies would not find it here. Shyamalan antagonists would have a field day throwing rotten tomatoes at this one.
But if you can watch a movie just for the story, if you love the night and the water...
risk your heart on this one.
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