{"id":6708,"date":"2006-07-24T13:41:04","date_gmt":"2006-07-24T13:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/in-defense-of-m-night.html"},"modified":"2006-07-24T13:41:04","modified_gmt":"2006-07-24T13:41:04","slug":"in-defense-of-m-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/in-defense-of-m-night.html","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of M. Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wouldn’t say that I was ever a M. Night Shyamalan "fan," although was as taken with The SIxth Sense<\/em> as most other people, saw some value in Unbreakable<\/em>, but thought Signs, <\/em>despite the strong faith element, was too measured (and the whole aliens and water thing struck me as silly, considering the H20 content of the atmosphere, but what do I know. Don’t answer that.) <\/p>\n

But I do appreciate that he’s actually trying to create something new and meaningful in his work, and that faith and even rather specifically Catholic motifs play a role (he went to Catholic grammar school and an Episcopal high school)<\/a>. <\/p>\n

When I saw the first trailer for Lady in the Water<\/em>, I was intrigued. The first trailer just featured Paul Giamatti being intrigued by the sounds from the swimming pool, etc. Then the second trailer came out – with the suspense and "Save the world!" element added, and I lost interest. <\/p>\n

Then the reviews started coming in, and I saw that evil in the film is essentially represented by a film critic character and I thought, "Heh. He’s daring them to hate his movie!" And I thought…well, maybe. That’s sort of amusing. But then I read the spoilers and <\/p>\n

(after the jump)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

…was sort of appalled at the egomania of M. Night casting himself<\/em> as the writer whose stories will save the world. <\/p>\n

Wow.<\/p>\n

So, no I won’t be seeing it any time soon (as if I would be seeing any <\/em>movies any time soon) unless any of you can convince me otherwise. Steven Greydanus gave it a "D"<\/a>, Barbara Nicolosi walked out on it<\/a>, but in Slate…Ross Douthat defends, not the film, but M. Night himself, especially in contrast to other directors of his generation, who may have started off making a small film or two of interest and intelligence, but have, to but it bluntly, sold out to the blockbuster, the sequel, and the comic book:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

In The Village<\/em>, as in all his films, Shyamalan seems to be aiming for something, amid our summers of high-grossing superhero movies and our winters of little-seen Oscar-bait projects, that’s increasingly rare these days: a marriage of entertainment and art, of mass-market tastes and elite sensibilities. This is a hard combination to pull off, as his stumbles have demonstrated, but it’s precisely the goal that the film industry, home to our last mass art form, ought to be aspiring to. So, Shyamalan deserves credit, despite his vanity and his missteps\u2014not because he’s succeeding, necessarily, but because he’s willing to keep trying and unwilling to take his place with those timid, highly compensated directors who know neither victory nor defeat. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The man obviously needs a colleague or two to reign him in, give him feedback and even write with him…<\/p>\n

Anyone seen it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wouldn’t say that I was ever a M. Night Shyamalan "fan," although was as taken with The SIxth Sense as most other people, saw some value in Unbreakable, but thought Signs, despite the strong faith element, was too measured (and the whole aliens and water thing struck me as silly, considering the H20 content…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nIn Defense of M. Night - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/in-defense-of-m-night.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In Defense of M. Night - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I wouldn’t say that I was ever a M. Night Shyamalan "fan," although was as taken with The SIxth Sense as most other people, saw some value in Unbreakable, but thought Signs, despite the strong faith element, was too measured (and the whole aliens and water thing struck me as silly, considering the H20 content…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/in-defense-of-m-night.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-07-24T13:41:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"In Defense of M. Night - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/in-defense-of-m-night.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"In Defense of M. Night - Via Media","og_description":"I wouldn’t say that I was ever a M. Night Shyamalan "fan," although was as taken with The SIxth Sense as most other people, saw some value in Unbreakable, but thought Signs, despite the strong faith element, was too measured (and the whole aliens and water thing struck me as silly, considering the H20 content…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/in-defense-of-m-night.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-07-24T13:41:04+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/in-defense-of-m-night.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/in-defense-of-m-night.html","name":"In Defense of M. Night - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-07-24T13:41:04+00:00","dateModified":"2006-07-24T13:41:04+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/in-defense-of-m-night.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/in-defense-of-m-night.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/in-defense-of-m-night.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"In Defense of M. Night"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}