This corpse has been picked over plenty, and while I'll stipulate that it's a bit undercooked and pretty silly, on a rewatch I think it's one of those things you just have to deliberately slide into, which makes sense given that it's all of a piece with SIGNS and THE VILLAGE in its depiction of an insular community or group united by belief. You can choose to read Bob Balaban's character as a snipe at all critics, or you can take it as a representation of blanket, unfeeling skepticism. Up to you. Anyway, Shyamalan may exhibit all manner of ill-advised creative hubris but that doesn't mask his exceptional capabilities as a visual filmmaker. It's hard to make an ugly movie…

"He's hearing the voice of God through a crossword puzzle."

Acho que só o Apichatpong acredita tanto no poder sugestivo da história oral como o Shyamalan. E é uma crença no sentido de uma fé mística mesmo, fé em uma mitologia fantasiosa que foi perdida, uma mitologia essencialmente narrativa que parte da infantilização de alguns elementos justamente para revelar uma essência primária e poderosa das coisas.

O melhor de tudo é que o Shy faz isso com um humor tão espirituoso quanto excêntrico. Toda a deslocalização cotidiana desse filme parte de uma ridicularização meio frontal das coisas, mas é justamente a fé nesses elementos ridículos que os torna grandiosos. Fora todo um senso de união que o ambiente coletivo gera,…

Film #4 of Gustav's M.National Shyamalan-a-thon

I thought about it, but honestly could not arrive at an answer. I do not know what was going through M.Night’s mind when he came up with this idea. Even more baffling is what gave him the impression that this would work and be accepted. The concept is total bollocks. The juxtaposition of fairy tale elements along with reality simply does not work here, as all the characters are mere devices, cardboard-like, uninteresting, ill-conceived, and dreadfully executed. They come off looking utterly dim-witted as they are shown to comfortably believe in such fatuous happenings.

Part of my frustration stems from the fact that the film did not even deliver on the promise of an…

I often talk about how much I want an adaptation of Stephen King's Lisey's Story but Lady In The Water is pretty much the... exact vibe for me. Super important that almost every shot before the Lady is introduced is obstructed - there is something missing from the lives of everybody in this, the decreasing length of Shyamalan's shots slowly finding the core of what makes these people tick - but this isn't a film about people; it's about conflict (involving people). If the Water is purity/the capacity to imagine & believe/where all myth comes from then the Land - the location of our narrative - is a blight on the freedom of half-lit 'truer' perception. Just look at how this…

É tão difícil defender o que você ama incondicionalmente. Você percebe todos os problemas que os outros apontam, mas as qualidades, elas te parecem tão superiores que você os minimiza ou os ignora. Seu eleito é imperfeito, mas é seu. Você o escolheu assim que colocou os olhos nele e é natural que queira defendê-lo, afirmá-lo e celebrá-lo. O cinema é meu refúgio e quando eu separo um filme para ser meu, eu posso soar até arrogante ao expressar minhas razões para amá-lo, coisa que eu sempre faço por escrito porque sou um péssimo orador.

Com A Dama na Água foi exatamente assim. Assisti ao filme numa pré-estréia para uma platéia de convidados que gostam de pré-estréias, mas nem sempre…

"I wanna be like a child again. I wanted to believe there's more than this awfulness around us".

Pensando num cinema recente acho que só as Wachowski ou o Kurosawa têm uma sensibilidade parecida no sentido de entregar um filme que realmente acredita num poder muito puro de restauração, em um retorno a uma pureza perdida na humanidade, uma fé renovadora que nunca se desafia, mas se permite acreditar totalmente durante algumas horas. O Shyamalan eleva isso ao seu ápice (aqui e em Sinais).

Muito lindo como não existe quase nenhuma dúvida interna dos personagens desde o começo. Se Sinais era sobre o ceticismo espiritual do homem, aqui o personagem do Giamatti (e todos os outros do condomínio) se entrega…

I feel like this is so much closer to being good than I remember being, but also somehow so much farther. It’s not exactly a cliff drop from the good side of M. Night to the bad side, but rather a slow slide of bad writing habits that slowly made his movies worse until they were completely unwatchable, or at least hilarious watchable in a way he didn’t intend. In this film there’s two huge problems:

1. It’s a film about a fairy tale, but fairy tales tend to be fairly simple, which this most decidedly is not because it takes multiple chats for Paul Giamatti to hear the fairy tale, and there’s multiple details and if this then this…

THE HOT TAKES:

Bob Balaban's notorious monologue is hilarious. I'm shocked that this obvious fun jab at the pretension and self-importance of critics, is perceived by many as some sort of crusade against naysayers.

The same goes for M. Night's self-casting. I get it; It's tacky, it's conceited. This point is also overstated. There's a hypocrisy in calling this out, when our culture fawns over and rewards narcissistic figures in other artistic mediums (Kanye? Cardi B anyone?) I remember watching this for the first time, NOT knowing M. Night's name, what he looked like, or that the director also acted in the movie. His performance nor his character were ever distracting and it doesn't take over the entire movie. It's…