Between Reviews: Anything but Happening
ANYTHING BUT HAPPENING
JULY 20, 2008 - THE DWINDLING BOX-OFFICE RECEIPTS OF Manoj Night Shyamalan’s recent films suggest that the director is seriously losing out on fans, and as if to compensate, his latest outing is one that would be unthinkable without fans – industrial strength fans, that is, the kind that can be switched on during shooting and aimed at foliage to make it appear that they are blowing in the wind. That’s the primary image you take away from The Happening, all those swaying trees, whispering to one another, hatching secret plans for world domination (or, at least, self preservation against the plastics-using, ozone-layer-depleting, me-me-me humans) by releasing chemicals into the air that could be brainwashing hordes of people into killing themselves. It’s like a doomsday scenario envisioned by a bunch of Tolkien’s Ents that sat up late at night, watching The Manchurian Candidate and jotting down survival tips.
If that comes off as somewhat spoilery, I assure you it’s not, for this theory about the plants of the world uniting to defend themselves against mankind is tossed off fairly early into the film – and rather bluntly, it might be said, as if Shyamalan couldn’t be bothered to shape this plot development into a slow-burning revelation. When early reviews for The Happening began to trickle out, they were so alarmingly dismissive, I thought it seriously couldn’t be all that bad. Unfortunately it is – and perhaps worse. This is the weakest work of Shyamalan’s career, and the most disappointing too – because even if The Village and Lady in the Water appeared the efforts of someone in a serious slump, they were at least crafted well and they at least featured flashes of the director’s elegant, unhurried filmmaking, whereas The Happening, almost as soon as it begins to unfurl, goes rapidly downhill, and just when you thought it’s hit rock bottom, it keeps burrowing further, as if on a single-minded mission to journey to the molten core of badness.
The best parts of The Happening are the early parts, when we’re shown what’s happening, before we get to why it’s happening. The opening credits appear against angry clouds roiling against a bright blue sky that briskly turns black, perhaps prefiguring the darkening of Nature’s intent – and soon after, people begin to kill themselves in droves. Construction workers jump off great heights, first looking like little more than rag dolls, with their flailing limbs, until the sickening crunch of their bodies against the asphalt reminds us that they are indeed human. In another tersely effective scene, a cop has barely shot himself when his gun is picked up by someone else, who puts it to his head, and the weapon subsequently finds itself in the hands of a woman in high heels bent on killing herself, like the final participant grabbing the baton in a deadly relay race.
But once the generalities of this happening are established and once the film gets down to specifics – specific people, specific circumstances – Shyamalan loses his grip and never regains it. Mark Wahlberg, who did such fine work recently in The Departed, is wretchedly miscast as the world’s most empathetic and earnest teacher, who lays the groundwork for the film’s eco-thesis by asking his class to speculate on the vanishing honeybees. It turns worse when he gets home to his wife (played by Zooey Deschanel, whose eyes are perpetually popped in part-wonder, part-terror, as if an endless procession of UFOs had descended in front of her) and we discover we’re to endure a lame martial-trouble subplot. These scenes are so flatly staged, with large swatches of dull exposition – and these performances are so uniformly terrible – that even the ninety-minute running time begins to look like a long haul.
It’s tempting to imagine what Hitchcock would have made of this material, especially on the evidence of his own little eco-thriller, The Birds. That was another essentially unexplained mystery about the unfathomable ways of Nature, but Hitchcock at least had the good sense to stage some extraordinary set pieces that left us with little time to think. He knew the story was schlock and he treated it with the respect it deserved, which was nothing. But Shyamalan wants to transform schlock into high art, and he appears to have bought into the myth of his self-importance to the extent that giving his audience the simple chills they seek is beneath him. There is, therefore, very little that’s thrilling in his thriller, and neither is there enough here to make you think. The Big Idea simply isn’t big enough, at least the way it’s been dealt with here. The deliberateness of Shyamalan’s rhythms, the hypnotic force with which he cast his spell and drew us into his frames – that’s all gone now. The funereal pace of The Happening seems merely a gimmick; it’s there only because that’s what we expect from A Shyamalan Film, as opposed to being there to underline something tangible.
I watched Wanted – the new action movie with Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy – soon after The Happening, and it made me wish Shyamalan had taken a few pointers in preposterousness from it. Wanted is about a secret society of weavers who become, over the years, a fraternity of assassins capable of shooting the wings off a fly and firing bullets along impossibly curved trajectories (and yet managing to hit the target) – but none of this really matters. Wanted is schlock treated as schlock, and it’s all the better for it – a trashy premise enlivened by wit and style and a sense of humour, along with some astounding stunt choreography. (Believe me, you haven’t seen anything till you’ve seen a standing man sucked into the side-seat of a swerving automobile, like a piece of trash swept up by a vacuum cleaner.) I don’t mean to compare a deliberately over-the-top action thriller with something that wants to be contemplative and understated, but sometimes, it’s not such a bad thing to bow down to your material and make the most of it. A good filmmaker needn’t always be an artist – much less an Artist. It’s okay, sometimes, to just go out there and have some fun.
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This review is all that the movie clearly isn’t — absolutely delightful and outright entertaining! Proof that there’s someone out there who can actually go and have fun with such class, even with material this crass.
“..and just when you thought it’s hit rock bottom, it keeps burrowing further, as if on a single-minded mission to journey to the molten core of badness.” Looks like the Center of the Earth is the most Happening place in the cinema universe, currently!
“..Zooey Deschanel, whose eyes are perpetually popped in part-wonder, part-terror, as if an endless procession of UFOs had descended in front of her” - LOL!
Now that I’m done reading all about The Happening, I’m dying to go watch Wanted.
And oh, your closing lines need bolding and underlining — sensational stuff! Hope Shyamalan is taking serious notes..
I’m sure I’m in the minority here, but I loved “The Village”. For all it’s known faults, it was a beautifully crafted film. I also loved the ending (not the twist which reveals the time period) but the absolute ending when Bryce comes back with the medicines to Joaquin. The way I took it was the movie ends with Bryce not knowing whether to believe her dad ,who had told her the truth about the mythical creatures, or to believe what she experienced in the forest…being attacked by one of the creatures (Adrien Brody in disguise) and not knowing it was a human becasue of her blindness. So, for all purposes the myth lived on…I thought that was beautiful. I know the movie was universally ripped by critics, but this was one of the films that I went against the grain. I loved it…
BTW, I haven’t seen “Lady in the Water” or “The Happening” yet…so can’t quite comment on it.
The first 30 minutes was good in fact, till they get serious abut the whys and the marriage business. By taking consideration into that, I wouldn’t say it is that bad.
Anon.: Thanks much.
shankar: I didn’t mind Village - but Shyamalan’s career has definitely been one of diminishing returns - though I’d say he peaked with his second major film, Unbreakable. I just love that movie.
saraks: I couldn’t get beyond the first ten minutes
I thought “Signs” was his best,his slow illusion of creating something out of nothing actually..suited his slow style..would watch it anyday compared to any of his movies
shankar, count me in your minority - and for the same reasons!
…Hitchcock at least had the good sense to stage some extraordinary set pieces that left us with little time to think. He knew the story was schlock and he treated it with the respect it deserved, which was nothing.
Dude, watch The Birds again. In particular the conversations between the mother (Jessica Tandy) and Melanie, and between Melanie and Annie. Also the masterfully crafted dialogue-less sequence towards the end, when everyone is holed up together inside the house. Viewed in isolation, these scenes are just as serious (and attentive towards the building up of relationships between characters) as anything Bergman has done.
Also, what do you think of Unbreakable? (Have we discussed it before? I can’t remember.)
Um, I posted my last comment before seeing that you had mentioned Unbreakable in one of your comments! *Off to search my Gmail records to see if we’ve discussed it*
Whatever else it has, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening does have its small moments of genius, like all cinema, like any art form that allows, purposefully or inadvertently, reality to creep in. Here is an incomplete catalog of a maligned film’s better details.
-Parks. Not just regular parks, dangerous parks. No longer a picturesque setting to have affluent protagonists kill expositional dialog, our urban oasis of floral respite bite back at our casual, indifferent utility of their artificial existence.
-Trains. Except for westerns, Japanese movies, and the average European film, one would think trains no longer exist in 21st century cinema. In the U.S. one may even be right, but there is something intrinsically cinematic about trains (something to do with the unavoidable combination of interior space and exterior space), something about fate too, about squashing strangers in a claustrophobic, moving space . Heck, even the aforementioned expositional scenes (like Zoey Deschanel’s phone call to “Joey”) when set on trains acquire something special: the distinct presence of other people in near proximity, the distinct knowledge something else is happening (travel, the outside world) while the story exhibits itself. Also, train stations are nice dead zones, especially so in this film, even in a typically curtailed and unexploited scene, where Mark Wahlberg wonders with exasperation just where the hell the train stopped and a cabal of conductors seem immersed in a conspiracy of ignorance, and then disappear from the film for no apparent reason.
-Forsaking urbanity. Theme aside, The Happening quickly moves out of the cities towards unknown, essentially unnamed Northeastern small towns. Not described at all cinematically (no community, population, center, etc.), there is still an indelible impression of a massive non-urban countryside to this film. A small town diner, packed to the gills and then promptly abandoned, is a scene you could never find anywhere else, yet another sense of a different, strange (unknown?), pervasive yet dispersed grouping of people and space outside of American cities.
-Acting styles. Shyamalan has a great deal of trouble with tone in this movie, trembling to embrace the more direct comedy of Lady in the Water (2006) but never taking that fateful step forward. That leaves a great disparity in acting styles: Wahlberg with the muscular serenity of a 1940s hero (much of the film’s first half echoes old Hollywood, both in storytelling and in Wahlberg); Deschanel with the quirky neurosis of a certain kind of contemporary realist cinema; John Leguizamo simultaneously employing sympathetic affect and insane disposition (he leaves the film early, for shame, the acting was a firecracker waiting to go off, instead sputtering pathetically out by way of the plot); and various near contemptuous “small town portraits” which go so far to caricature the small cast as to sabotage Shyamalan’s clearly intended shorthand (think the nursery couple, the lonely old woman).
-Middle finger to the audience. For such a B-movie concept, Shyamalan refuses to give us a B-movie execution, rendering much of the film’s conceptual oomph stupid and silly instead of extreme enough to be frightening. There is a pay-off though: a significant, if hollow, subversion of the narrative goal for 95% of all Hollywood cinema from the 1920s til now: the coupling of the central male and female characters. The film flirts dangerously at first with suggesting the only way for our characters to survive is to break into smaller and smaller groups: eventually forcing our couple to split up to survive. (Sadly, Shyamalan refuses to ask questions like that, questions director Frank Borzage answers with cannon salvos roughly seventy years earlier.) But what the film does do rather than force or challenge separation is to not only suggest but make dead certain that the coupling of Walhberg and Deschanel is doing its part to doom the world (or at least Paris), is responsible for future deaths, and that the Spielbergerian turn the epilogue takes (if you know what I mean) is not a life-bringing joy but a death-bringing curse. Biting!
Also probably in the minority here but I’ve liked pretty much everything Night’s done (including his cameo in one episode of Entourage) except Signs and The Happening both of which I haven’t seen yet. Like Shankar I too liked The Village but, I liked Lady in the Water more. Dont ask me why, something about a guy (Paul Giamatti) hiding from his life always hooks me to a story.
raghav / Deepauk M: Yeah, signs was good. I’ve liked (at least for the most part) his films till this one, and I even wrote a piece defending Lady in the Water. But this was just not, well, happening. raghav, as for his best, I’d go with Unbreakable. That’s one of the saddest meditations on loneliness ever.
Jabberwock: I actually watched Birds a week ago. Sorry dude. That stuff you mentioned, I found it was good connective tissue, but didn’t see anything very profound in it.
In general, I find 60s Hitchcock less profound than his earlier work — even stuff like Marnie. I like the film very much, but *deep* it just isn’t.
Uh, you have “gmail records”?
TPM: That’s interesting, but other than the man-woman-child situation, nothing seemed especially relevant to this film, IMO. I liked the *concept* of Man and Woman rediscovering one another in Edenic surroundings when the Wrath of God (so to speak) has struck down everyone else — but it just wasn’t handled well. And Wahlberg didn’t work for me at all.
“Mark Wahlberg, who did such fine work recently in The Departed,”
He looked like a testostrone-addled high school kid. All he had to do was mouth a few smartass lines(he has to thank the screenwriter) laced with cusswords. There was absolutely no depth to his character. One-dimensional. The movie itself was overrated, but thats another issue.
TPM: Your bullet#3 “Forsaking Urbanity” somehow reminded me of a Stephen King novel I read last fall: Salem’s Lot. A true-blooded nod to Stoker’s Dracula if there was one. The foreword King wrote to that book is one of the best I’ve ever read. Thanks for the trivia tangent.
Whoa, so it’s not all about the milk of human kindness after all! *tempted to insert a smiley* Even though I disagree strongly - I think there’s more cohesive, thematically satisfying profundity in Hitch’s little finger than in a whole film made by many directors who are regarded as more “serious” (was thinking about this while watching Antonioni’s The Passenger at Cinefan the other day) - this exchange was worth it just to see you write something like “I like the film very much, but *deep* it just isn’t.” That’s the sort of thing I expect the highbrow critics to say.
Okay, just realised the last comment probably seemed snarkier than intended. It’s just that I’m hypersensitive/over-defensive when it comes to old Hitch, and in my experience critics of your sensibilities tend to be more open to the ways in which Hitch embeds substance into a stylistic framework - dealing with issues in a much more subtle, narrative-driven way compared to the directors whose work is overtly about Ideas and less about a Plot (and who, ironically, get wider acclaim for their brand of filmmaking).
Also, I was intensely annoyed by an old essay I read about The Passenger, where the writer said something to the effect that Antonioni’s film is a testament to “the inherent shallowness of Hitchcock’s work”. Idiotic beyond belief. Again, these are the people who can’t think of cinema as anything other than a visual rendition of literature (and they’d probably condescend to the great genre writing anyway).
*End of rant, hopefully*
Vijay: Oh, but Departed worked big time for me — every single time
Jabberwock: Okay, are you getting worked up about what *I* said about Hitch or what that other critic said? And besides, since when has depth or profundity become *the* yardstick for movie greatness?
I’m not saying “Hitch wasn’t deep in The Birds and therefore he’s bad.” I’m saying “Hitch wasn’t deep in The Birds and that’s what the movie needed and that’s why he’s great, because he knew what every movie needed.”
I speak of a fan of even Topaz and Torn Curtain from the 60s, but I do feel his 50s work (okay, including Psycho) is more resonant/deep than the stuff that came later.
And I also think Passenger, while a great film (though probably not as haunting as the alienation trilogy), is an apple to Hitchcock’s oranges — and I don’t see how one can even begin comparing them. Even if thematic similarites are there, the approaches are so bloody different.
Cool - I guess I’m just disagreeing with your view about The Birds not being a deep film (though having said that, I recognise that words like “deep” and “profound” shouldn’t just be bandied about. One needs to clarify in very specific terms what one means by them - especially in the context of cinema, which is such a misunderstood form and still tends to get assessed in literary terms).
Birds not deep/profound. I thought so too until I got this analysis from a friend of a friend. Enjoy!:)
———————
Hitchcock and the screenwriter weren’t thinking of a contrived, one-to-one
relationship between the birds and Mitch’s mother. That would be too easy
and not very deep. However, by having a single seagull attack Marnie upon
Mitch’s first attraction to her while watching through his binoculars, the
intimation of an uncontrollable, irrational force of nature being unleashed upon those who would threaten it is first revealed. It is in this way the birds are connected to the mother, for her clinging attachment to her son
out of a fear of being left alone is just that, an uncontrollable,
irrational force of nature unleashed when it is threatened. In other words,
the mother isn’t just represented by the birds as birds - though birds are
primitive, prehistoric - it’s as a universal, blind force of nature lashing
out (they even attack the children, who most mothers want to protect) that
makes the menacing, unpredictable aspect of the birds a psychologically
powerful representation of the mother’s primitive feelings. Genius!
——————
It’s interesting how often Hitchcock comes up in a discussion of Shyamalan’s movies - to the latter’s discredit invariably.
Say, perhaps you could do a piece on Hitchcock? Me love Hitch. It could be on anything Hitchcock - a particular film, a general retrospective, etc. Just make sure you mention Cary Grant. CG should be worked into a conversation whenever possible.:-)
See? Layers can be unpeeled out of any movie. I wish to attempt this for Ghilli sometime soon
Vijay. I don’t think the Bird’s analysis is a case of seeing the emperor’s new clothes. Why else would Hitch have spent so much time on the mother-son and mother-son’s lover relationship?
Anon (comment 19): that’s an interesting view of the film but I think it’s also an oversimplified one - the mother is actually a much more balanced character than some readings of the film suggest (she’s certainly not an extension of Psycho’s Mrs Bates, for example). Incidentally Robin Wood has an outstanding essay on The Birds for anyone who’s interested.
vijay, looking forward eagerly for your ghilli unpeel. Not that one should scoff at that - afterall, it is supposed to be a ‘good’ (as opposed to terrible) masala movie.
Why dont you actually follow up on this and do this one?
Jabberwock/Anon: I shouldn’t have gotten into this exchange in the first place - because, as you say, discussions on depth and profundity aren’t likely to resolve themselves in comments. I guess I just had a knee jerk reaction to the Bergman name-drop, because I didn’t see where *that* comparison was coming from. Not that one is better than the other or naything, but where would you even begin to compare the works of people so diverse in everything?
Also, the key goof-up in this article was probably the use of the word “schlock” - looking back, it seems too harsh for Birds. I should have probably left it at “eco-horror.”
Shalini: Yeah - they do overlap somewhat in their obsessions and even their filmmaking choices.
Vijay: Actually, if you’re game, you should. I don’t know about layers, but it’s interesting how it brings together a lot of masala-movie staples. I remember really enjoying it in the theatre. Haven’t seen it after that, so I’m not sure how I’d react to it now…
To chime in on the side discussion on Birds here. I don’t have too serious of a stance to take or anything, but all I know is I really loved watching this movie a decade back — a week before I toured Bodega Bay up north — despite its ending leaving me feeling somewhat like a just-dropped-on-the-floor hot potato.
I came across these closing lines in a Village Voice article that seemed to echo part of the sentiment expressed by (the other) anon’s friend’s friend up here at #19: “In spite of its place as one of Hitchcock’s most popular, The Birds has never quite gotten its critical due. More than just tailor-made for the orange-alert era, The Birds locates the source of horror in the confrontation between everyday banality and the naked irrational, resonating powerfully in an America where unhinged ideology has overrun even reason itself. It’s a movie whose time has finally arrived.” Check it out: Dye Hard: A Technicolor Trip Into Hollywood Hallucinations.