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"A far-fetched story with little suspense and unconvincing scenarios..."
That's the Rotten Tomatoes consensus for writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's urban fantasy film, Lady in the Water, which was savaged by critics upon release in July 2006. It was no luckier on the box office side of the equation, grossing just $72 million against an estimated $70 to $75 million budget. Some even see Lady in the Water as the negative tipping point in the filmmaker's career, which wouldn't properly recover until The Visit and Split came along a decade later in 2015 and 2016, respectively.
Two decades later, however, the whimsical and melancholic title deserves a second look.
Reappraising M. Night Shyamalan's 2006 fantasy film, Lady in the Water
Based on a bedtime story Shyamalan would tell his children, the movie unfolds at a Philadelphia apartment complex, The Cove, whose residents find themselves beset by otherworldly events following the arrival of a magical water nymph named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard) in the community pool. Story is taken in by the apartment's unassuming superintendent, Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), who agrees to help the young woman get home.
That juxtaposition between the ordinary and extraordinary, paired with the core narrative idea of a mysterious, yet benevolent refugee from another world, offers a certain Spielbergian charm in the vein of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
There's something inexplicably intoxicating about the discovery of a small pocket of enchantment in a thoroughly jaded world.
"It had a kind of inexplicable magnetism about it that made it want to be bigger," Shyamalan said of the original pre-bedtime fairy tale during a 2006 interview with Time magazine. "We kept talking about it and I told it again, which is not a normal thing, so it stood out as an anomaly. I had really been dancing around with making up my own mythology."
At first glance, Heep seems almost too willing to buy Story's fanciful account.
He makes a half-hearted attempt to find out where she came from and, even more curiously, doesn't call the police. This is not believable human behavior, you could argue. If a naked person showed up in your swimming pool and started spouting stories about prescient mermaids and giant eagles, you'd rightfully deem them insane before contacting the proper authorities.
Heep buys into the make-believe with almost no resistance, which seems rather odd, until you factor in the knowledge that he's been pretending for years. He was once a doctor, but gave up a well-to-do career in medicine and took on the role of a humble handyman—almost as an act of penitence—after his family was murdered during a break-in one night.
He was already living a pseudo-fantasy existence by the time Story showed up on his doorstep, offering a chance at redemption and return to innocence, however unbelievable the circumstances. Perhaps Heep realizes subconsciously something odd is afoot when his stutter (implied to be a byproduct of the character's severe emotional trauma) completely vanishes in the presence of the newly-arrived house guest.
The same could be said for the other residents of The Cove, who almost seem trapped and insulated within the monotonous, segmented routine of their proverbial inlet: A group of stoners discussing nonsense topics all day; a man glued to a war playing out live on his television screen; a struggling writer hoping to change the world with his words; a cynical film critic who laments the death of originality.
"[The apartment complex] is a honeycomb," Lady in the Water cinematographer Christopher Doyle told American Cinematographer for the magazine's August 2006 issue. "It's a metaphor for society. Each [tenant] his or her private experience, and it's a major step for him or her to engage in the outside world."
For all intents and purposes, their respective units might as well be prison cells, with Story representing glorious escape, salvation. Like Heep, the other apartment denizens join the cause and giving in to the allure of the fairy tale with little to no argument because to do otherwise would be to admit defeat in a broken world devoid hope and wonder.
One character sums it up best near the end: "I wanted to believe more than most. I want to be like a child again. I needed to believe there was something more than this awfulness around us."
