OK, I have to take up the cudgels for this film and for Shyamalan in general. I was never a fan or even close to, but I think Shyamalan is a man on a constant search and with a deep yearning for a better world. I really do. This film, taking it pure and simple is beautiful and gentle and whimsical just like one of these ALMOST perfect pop songs, where you can't help it, but love them. So, as with these songs I'm not going to respond with the nastiness of a cynic (or worse: of a critic ;) ) to Syamalan's Lady in the Water, but have to engage into the story which, as always in the director's oeuvre, combines everyday life with supernaturalness and shows an array of different characters who are all searching for the meaning in their own lives and/or already haver lost any courage and optimism. It's of course no psychologically elaborated masterpiece à la Bergman, and yet, it isn't bad either, as the majority thinks it is. Shot by Wong-long-time colleague and virtuoso Christopher Doyle, the film abstains from the usual, "unbelievable" twist at the end and rather tells a modern fairy tale (the idea to this movie arose when Shyamalan read his kids a bedtime story – this is a loose adaptation of that story) with charmed, broken characters, who finally find a purpose in life and at least change their present résumé through rescue at the end (this is no spoiler, of course we have a happy end here). "The times they are a-changin'", as the band A Whispering In The Noise properly puts it with their Bob Dylan cover during the closing credits.
Review of Lady in the Water
