See, I've always liked him more than you do, but I still agree with everything you've said here.

Wide Awake - really enjoyed it, before I even knew who Shyamalan was
The Sixth Sense - excellent
Unbreakable - enjoyable, but not entirely my kind of film
Signs - utterly terrifying, very effective
The Village - interesting, but very very gay twist ending
That Fucking American Express Ad - now he's dead to me

Definitely believes his own hype too much, which is a shame. We all saw where he came from: right outta nowhere with a handful of homemade Super 8 stories. He's a self-made artist with a knack for storytelling. Could've been the next Spielberg. But instead of letting great movies be the goal, and fame and critical praise be the means that helped him achieve it, he's let the fame be the goal and cultivated a myth of himself ever since. Maybe some people could do that full-time and still have enough creative energy to make great movies, but he's showing that he's not among them.

When I saw the trailer for "Lady in the Water," I thought: this looks weird, and oddly fable-y, but Giamatti rarely disappoints, and then the title faded up at the end: "M. Night Shyamalan's The Lady in the Water." And I thought: awwww, HELL no! It's a shame he didn't try making a normal movie. (Narf? Tartutic?) People would've enjoyed that. But instead he's determined to keep proving how outre he can be.

And the stupid thing is, someone as bright as Shyamalan undeniably is should understand that artists such as himself are going to be sensitive to criticism and are going to feel attacked. So he should know to cool down rather than impulsively ripping a preproduction out by its roots, hauling it down the street to Warners, and then writing a scathing book about it. He's going to want to work with some of these people again, and now he's poisoned the water over a tantrum that he now admits was unjustified. What a fool.

But, remember, please... Don't fuck the sea nymph.

Right on. One of the greatest things I learned in film school is how to take criticism and allow it to make the work better. I still hate criticism (can't deny that). But I can hate it and know that it's worthwhile and good for me. Like going jogging.

And as for Shyamalan, Jacobsen's "Not buying it" pretty much sums up my entire reaction to his films, INCLUDING _The Sixth Sense_. (I've seen Sixth Sense, Signs, and The Village, all of which I agree had some creepy atmospherics, but creepiness does not a good movie make, as I think has already been well stated here.)

I remember having fights with people about _Sixth Sense_ at the time (well, at least with my sister). When I saw it, I recall being relatively into it as it began and progressed along, but I was also waiting for it to really grab me. Then, instead of really being grabbed, I realized, "Oh never mind, here comes a twist ending," and then, seconds later, it was, and I ceased to buy the story at all. I just didn't care. I had been waiting for the moment when I would really lose myself entirely into the characters, and instead I got booted into pure intellectual mode by the cute brain-teaser twist. It was tremendously irritating. _The Village_ was the same way, only much worse.

I have tried for a long time to figure out why these twists throw me out of the story whereas _Shawshank_'s twist (which I also didn't know was coming) pulled me in deeper and made me adore the movie. Somehow Sixth Sense feels like "Haha, I GOTCHA, you audience morons!" whereas I didn't feel condescended to by Shawshank. I think this is because:

1. With its twist, Sixth Sense invalidates most of the story that's come before: most of the character interactions never really occurred, or occurred radically differently than we thought they did. Shawshank, by contrast, merely adds an additional layer of meaning to all the still-totally-valid events that have gone before. One movie forces me to question which parts of what I've just sat through (especially key character interactions and moments of growth) are actually important, and the other movie just adds more importance to what I've seen.

2. Sixth Sense makes its lead character (Bruce) into either (to put it generously) a deluded soul or (less generously) a giant idiot for not realizing what's been going on, and it makes the kid, its other lead character, into a borderline liar, someone who's been keeping a critical secret for arbitrary reasons of his own that I've never really understood (okay, so he's a kid, and therefore gets a partial pass on that, but still). Shawshank's twist, by contrast, makes the lead character (Robbins) into a smarter and more optimistic guy than we ever realized, and its other lead character (Freeman) into a guy we relate to more than ever because we're just as shocked and pleased as he is. Reduced to a simpler rule, I prefer movies (at least dramas -- comedies are different) about characters that are ultimately slightly better/braver/wiser/funnier/more positive than I am, not movies about characters who are big idiots. This is one reason many ghost and slasher movies (and, on TV, "Lost") make me so irritable: I want to see characters doing things that are slightly wiser/braver/better than what I would do in their place, not slightly (or significantly) worse or more stupid. Many superhero movies are annoying because the characters are too amazing to be relatable, but I do want a character I can aspire to live up to, not someone I look down on. I really looked down on Bruce Willis by the end of Sixth Sense, whereas I looked up to Tim Robbins.

3. The reason why Shawshank's main character would keep the big twist a secret from his co-main character (and, by extension, the audience) makes total pragmatic sense within the world of the story. I'm not sure why the kid keeps the secret in Sixth Sense (maybe he explains, but it wasn't memorable... oh, wait, I do recall some crap about "ghosts don't like to admit that they're dead!" but that just re-confirms point #2 -- that Bruce Willis is deluded or a big idiot; and I'd bet that the ghosts' tendancy for self-delusion was something that Shyamalan inserted as a tool solely to justify the twist ending, not arising naturally from the world of the story). Similarly, the reason why the character in the dark (Willis, Freeman) never figures out the twist is much better and more practically logical in Shawshank: not only does it make sense that Tim Robbins would keep his plan a secret even from friends, but it makes sense that Freeman wouldn't have a lot of chances to find out about it. In Sixth Sense, Bruce Willis has PLENTY of chances to find out about his new state of being even if for some unknown reason the kid decides never to try to explain it to him in plain English. The one that irritated me the most, for some reason, was the part where he shows up in a posh conference room at the kid's school and the kid is brought in to meet him. Okay, first of all, who told the kid to come out of class and go to that conference room? According to the twist, that shouldn't have been possible, but more to my point, how did Bruce get into the conference room? Living people have to talk to school administrators before they can meet with kids in school conference rooms. Bruce, apparently, arrived there via supernatural means but is deluded enough to miss that point himself, and Shyamalan conveniently didn't film Bruce's arrival for the audience. It's convenience and trickery, not elegant plotting.

4. Shawshank's twist works thematically as well as structurally; this is a movie about hope, and the ending is a fantastic statement on the power of hope. I'm not sure what Sixth Sense's theme is, unless it's something about the power of self-delusion, in which case I guess the twist sort of supports that, but not as well: a movie that deliberately sets out to trick its audience in order to teach them about self-delusion isn't teaching them about self-delusion; it's teaching them about being deliberately tricked.

Anyway, my point is that I, too, love being delighted by a good twist ending, but too often (especially in Shyamalan's movies), twist endings are actually just the cheap tricks of a filmmaker trying to show off that he's smarter than both his main character and his audience. BO-ring.

PS: This long-winded rant brought to you courtesy of Procrastination. Note that I post most of my long-winded rants at exactly the times of year when I am finishing up a semester and have an overload of work. In this case, I am finishing up my summer school course this week with a paper, a presentation, and a final exam, and I'm also finishing up my study of Latin with a Big Exam. So naturally I am getting onto my friends' blogs to write several thousand words.

And I have to say, your friends and their blogs are better off because of it! Beautifully argued essay. I agree with your points. I think, though, that for me TSS worked because of its mood and tone. Many of my 290s relied entirely on these elements because writing a story that would work with the format and the time constraints just wasn't possible.

I have to commend the guy for his dedication to the art of telling a good spooky story. If you think about campfire stories, they're all the same way. There's nothing transcendent or uplifting about them, they exist as kind of a reverse-joke. In other words, the whole story is a setup for the hook or punchline at the end. So the purpose of it, after being scary, is to get you in that spooky mood. Like dressing up for Halloween.

Still, though, I would expect any good campfire storyteller to mix things up from story to story ("Oh man, not the hook story AGAIN!"). And that's the main thing that depresses me. His formula, flawed as it is, is boring now. His obsession with comic books only weakens him in the face of other directors who are MUCH better at that genre. Why doesn't he just do what he does best? Why doesn't he take a cue from Spielberg and just direct? Leave the writing to the Hollys and Frank Darabonts. That, I think, would earn him infinitly more respect and praise.

And just want to add that I'm elated that I'm getting long comment threads! Maybe someday I'll have 40-post blocks like onebee!

I'm still in the middle of crunch time, so I'm happy to lengthen your comment thread further. (but not by too much because I haven't had dinner yet and it's getting late.)

Point taken about the ghost stories, and point very well made at that. I'm not sure I'd thought about ghost stories in precisely that sense before: that their primary purpose is mood, not story. And as you well know, I truly love a good Halloween mood. So I will have to remember that and keep a more open mind in the future -- I'll probably enjoy these movies a lot more (I have a history of being disappointed by the "story" part of the ghost story, even in an absent-minded sort of way around actual campfires, but maybe I should, y'know, relax already). And I can definitely grant TSS "mood."

Still, maybe I'm weak, but I can't help imagining an ultimate sort of tale that would create that spooky, spooky mood combined with a great story (by "great" I don't necessarily mean twisty, but moving/revelatory/cathartic/profound -- pick your adjective). Have any spooky movies lived up to this for you? None come to mind for me instantly, but probably only because my brain doesn't have its catalogue of movies front and center right now.

Good X-Files episodes did it, I think (though the movie didn't pull it off). Certain Buffy episodes (though their mood wasn't usually "haunted" exactly).

The moral of the story, of course, being that TV is now the superior medium. ;-)

Okay, so I resolve never to go out of town ever again. (Of course, it turns out that all of these fun comments happened before I left! So, now we need a "recent comments" homepage feature or at least an RSS feed for comments, because I had no idea what I was missing!)

This is very exciting for me, because it is rare that I can read criticism of a movie I really like, have it reduce my appreciation of that movie by about 35-40%, and still enjoy the experience. Rare as in never, ever.

But Holly, you have an excellent point about The Sixth Sense. I always thought the movie didn't invalidate all the character interactions because they were between Haley and Bruce and those interactions did actually happen. But, you're right - Haley must have been snickering behind his hand after every one. Having seen the awkward contortions that Night will put his characters through in service of the twist (The Village), I'm now much more disappointed by the fact that the camera is conveniently absent during most of Bruce's day, when he'd obviously be having interactions that made him aware of his status.

"Why can't I flush the commode?" "Why are people hanging up on all my calls?" "I am so sick of these same corduroy pants..."

So, I admit it. I was a feckless rube the first time, and I was all excited to think back on The Sixth Sense and re-remember all the scenes in the context of the new information, but you're absolutely right. Maybe that was fun, but it's really mean to say to an audience, "Ha ha! You just watched a whole movie and now you know your time was wasted!" It's why I hate Mark Burnett so much.

Haley's reasons for keeping his secret can probably be defended - he needed Bruce's help, so he used him. But it's not like this really jumps out at you in the movie; it's just a semi-plausible rationale that you can think up later if you really try. And it's almost impossible to defend William Hurt's reasoning. So, it seems to me that we're all in an ongoing Night story. (Believe me, I don't like his self-assigned "Night" moniker any more than you, but it's easier than typing Shyamalan and then talking my spell-check program in off a ledge.)

Anyway, here's what I propose. We watched The Sixth Sense and really enjoyed it (well, most of us). Increasingly, his movies left us feeling unfulfilled, but we bought our tickets and we went in. Then comes The Village, and - big twist! - it's revealed that Night hates us, hates movies, hates his characters, and conceives all of them just to waste our time. So, just as Bruce was duped throughout The Sixth Sense, we've been duped for about five or six years of moviegoing.

I'm taking a stand. Bryce Dallas Howard or not, I'm still not going. Wake me when we get to the end part, where we get to wail on him with a baseball bat.

(And you're so dead-on right about Lost. If TV is the superior medium, Lost fucking owes us.)

Did you see where Jacobsen personally apologized to Johnny Depp for doubting his choices in the Jack Sparrow performance, after the first Pirates movie won so many hearts?

Class act, all the way. Best. Studio Executive. Ever.

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