Archetypes and Spiritual Gifts in LADY IN THE WATER: The Story that Saves A Life
This entry was posted on Friday, May 04. 2007 and is filed under uncategorized.
I finally got around to catching M. Night Shyamalan's much reviled LADY IN THE WATER. Guess what? I had a good time watching it. I think I was sufficiently snagged by Cleveland Heep, the protagonist, that I cared about the outcome to his story (pun intended), that I could suspend hypercriticism of the later flaws in the tale and weak characterization of secondaries. There's a lesson there, I think: Give the reader/watcher a sympathetic character, and that will cover a multitude of story sins. The other thing that kept me intrigued was the use of classic types, types familiar from fairy tales and legend and myth and fantasy. For an SF-lover like me, just throw an archetypal sounding character at me, and I'm gonna want to see what you do with it.
LOTS OF SPOILERS. If you haven't seen the film and want to remain ignorant, proceed no further.
What stood out for me in M.N.S.'s critically-battered film is his overt use of archetypes, bringing the story into fable and allegory country, and how some of those gifts meshed nicely with the Christian concept of spiritual gifts—that believers are endowed with abilities in order to accomplish the goals of Christ for the church and the world, gifts we may be unaware of until we begin serving and they come to light by their effectiveness and how fulfilled we feel in putting them to use.
LADY IN THE WATER (henceforth, LitW) begins with some primitive-ish drawings telling us a mythic tale of how humans and the people of the blue world—water folk—have lost touch with one another, due to humankind's darker desires and instincts. But that, occasionally, young ones from the Blue World are sent out to assist humankind, a dangerous trek for them, for they don't all return safely.
Then we move to our protagonist, sad-eyed and hard-working building caretaker Heep, who's current problem in superintending seems to be rule-breaking swimmers in the apartment complex's pool. He hears splashes, he has to keep calling in the pool repairman—who, in one opening scene, pulls out gunk and long hairs from the filter. Well, once night, in trying to corner the "splasher" transgressor, Heep slips, bangs his head, and falls into the pool. But when he wakes up, he's out of the water and in the company of an ethereal, otherwordly young woman with long red hair, who we find out is called Story. (Okay, a bit heavy-handed there.) We can guess that she's one of those young ones sent out to be a prophetic and inspiring voice to a darkened world.
Story wants to know if Heep feels an awakening. He does not. And so she figures this is not the "writer", the person she has come to ignite with awakening force. The film then becomes a quest to 1. find the writer (and others) in order to make sure the awakening takes place and 2. get Story safely back to the world of narfs (she's a narf), the Blue World, via the agency of a great eagle (eetlon).
The obstacles are 1. ignorance (Story doesn't know who the writer is) 2. a vicious enemy of Story's (the scrunt) and 3. time (there is a ticking clock, because the eetlon will only come twice, and Story is kept from leaving the first time he swoops by).
Heep believes Story and begins to aid her. He goes about the complex to find out who may be a writer, and after some false steps (false steps will be a feature of the tale), he finds that there is a writer, Vik, played by MKS, and he's got some sort of writer's block and has an unfinished work he's titled THE COOKBOOK. It's not a cookbook, but a book full of his ideas on politics and such. When Heep brings Vik to meet Story, the narf girl makes it clear Vik's ideas will have a huge impact on the world, that one day, a boy will read it an become a great leader, inspired to bring change. Vik believes her. (Simple faith is also part of the tale.)
Part of Heep's quest for information turns into a sort of "gathering of the gifted", too. He gets the story of the narf from a Korean immigrant (who doesn't speak English, so there is a humorous series of scenes where the Americanized daughter noisily translates for the hesitant mom). From the information in the original myth, Heep gets clues on how to act to protect Story and aid her in accomplishing her mission, which becomes his mission, and in time, becomes the mission of the key players in the drama.
So, the key players? The healer. The interpreter. The guardian. The guild. The seven sisters. And in the narf, the muse and the prophet.
I think for anyone who has had an interest in myths, fables, folk tales, and fantasy, those are loaded terms. What historical fantasy hasn't had a guild—of thieves, of merchants, of assassins. You can't play a role-playing fantasy game and not encounter these terms. The seven sisters comes from Greek myth, too, Atlas' daughters, who are now enshrined in the constellation Pleiades. You only have to visit the cover of Karen Hancock's last novel to see how "guardian" is an archetype. Healers, have you not read fantasies where some or many characters have special abilities in this area? Prophecies also play a big part in tales of quests and magic. And a muse—the one who can inspire, as Story inspires the wrier—is an old and familiar myth.
For the Christian, a revisitation of Paul's epistle to the Corinthians (first), chapter 12, and Romans, also chapter 12, is all that is needed to refresh oneself on the list and uses of spiritual gifts in the Body: apostleship, preaching, teaching, evangelism, prophecy, healing, giving, exhortation, mercy, helps, administration, service, tongues, interpretation of tongues, word of wisdom, faith, discernment of spirits, word of knowledge.
As we guess when we find out Heep was previously a physician, and as we guess when he takes the risk of swimming into the depths of the pool to Story's secret hideout to get a special mud that will heal her poisoned scrunt wounds, Heep is the healer. Previously, an older woman had been thought to be the healer because Heep saw the butterfly land on her (a sign), but the woman makes clear in a climactic moment that the butterflies arrived with Heep. He has misread the sign.
The interpreter was though to be Mr. Dury, because he had an uncanny knack for doing crossword puzzles. But it turns out to be his son, who has a similarly uncanny knack of seeing secret messages in cereal boxes. He reads some crucial information from the cereal boxes in the cupboard, one of my fave scenes.
The guild, first thought to be the group of slackers who just hung around an apartment and talked inanities, turns out to be nine persons: the seven sisters—five Hispanic siblings, plus Vic's sister, plus the Korean daughter (who has a sibling)—and the man with no secrets (a man with a blabbermouth wife) and the man of respected opinion (a strange, depressed sort of man who knows Heep's painful history).
Heep spearheaded the quest, and though he took advice, there were various errors made. In the end, the right group of gifted folks are together, and the seven sisters help the healer (Heep) bring Story back from the brink of death (after a near fatal second scrunt attack) by the laying on of hands as the healer speaks. (I don't think I need to elucidate about the laying on of hands and its role in Chrstian practice, eh?) It is in healing Story that Heep speaks of his pain and regret and finds healing himself for the hole in his soul brought about by the murder of his wife and children.
It gets a bit convoluted at the end. The one cynical and disbelieving voice is silence by scrunt attack, ie, the critic gets it. And Story with the help of a perfectly timed rainstorm (which sends the complex dwellers inside)—divine intervention?- -and the revelation of the true guardian (half-muscle guy) who can immobilize the scrunt with a look. Avenging furies called tartutics come and kill the scrunt for breaking the magic world's rules (he was supposed to let Story go home safely when the eetlon arrived), and Story is finally able to be winged away to safety, with the knowledge that she is a queen (the reason the scrunt wanted to kill her), and with the accomplishment of her mission (the writer is inspired and will change the future with his words), and with Heep's last words (and the last words of the movie): "Thank you for saving my life."
It's not hard to see a theme there: A story can save your life.
The seemingly arrogant intrusions by Shyamalan (him as the world changing writer for whom mystical beings risk death, the critic as the villain without faith and childlike imagination who merits a gruesome death) are a bit of a problem for me, and the really strained twists about who is what (healer, interpreter, etc), and the way we never get to know any character beyond surface knowledge other than Heep—these are all weaknesses. The scrunt never looks sufficiently threatening, either. And Story sure blabs alot about the fact that the writer will die by assassination, that he'll see two of his sister's 7 kids born before he dies, etc. And yet, when it comes to useful stuff that might help Heep, such as the identity of the guardian, that she does not know. The inconsistency's irksome. I mean, dang, she knows so much, but not the really immediately useful stuff? Too convenient a bit of ignorance that needed underpinning with some logic.
And yet, the elements to please a certain audience is there: a wounded good man who heals and needs healing; a disparate bunch of folks who rarely interact come to work together for the good of another in a selfless bonding; the faith that achieves a morally fine outcome. These things any Christian can find appealing.
Good lessons here. Care for each other. Work together. You have gifts of which you may not be aware, so move out of your comfort zone and test your potential. Your identity may be something awesome and miraculous. Turn off the chronic cynic and allow childlike wonder and faith into your life. Your work here and now—especially you, writer!—may change the future. Don't give up. There is evil around, lurking, but it can be overcome, because some are empowered to do battle with them and there is a stronger power that brings reckoning to violent transgressors of higher laws.
We all, if we are Spirit-indwelt, have a gift or gifts. And when we don't use them, something ends up crippled, because the Body needs all its part working to be in tip-top evil-fighting and good-edifying form. If Story had been let down by the interpreter or the healer or the guardian, she would have died. If the sisters had said, "Oh, one of us is enough to do the work", rather than all of them getting to it, Story would have died. The people and the time and the circumstances merged to make victory possible.
I think this could have been a great film. It has wonderful elements. But it's not great. I do think it has good elements, heartening elements, heart-warming elements, and because of that, I say to fans of myth and fables and fantasy to give it a shot, if you have avoided it because of bad critical press.
The lesson is at amazon.com. See how many give it one star. And how many give it five. And how many something in between. This is not a film that is hated across the board. Some people have loved it, raved about it, and felt uplifted by it. The ones who criticize it most harshly look at the craft weaknesses—plot holes, dialogue, structure, etc. The ones who love it most talk about how it made them feel, how it had magic, how it was lovely to them, how it was full of hope, how it had layers of meaning.
A flawed work can still speak to people if it has potent elements. I think that with this film, the potent elements are those timeless ones—the archetypes—and the sympathetic hero who won't give up, who will risk his own life for another.
And I keep thinking of that wonderful last line, of a freed Heep, who we know can move on to a good life, reconciled to his grief, finding a purpose again in healing: "Thank you for saving my life."
I've suffered from the blues all my life. I'm melancholic by those temperament tests. Hah. But I"m also depressive physiologically. Shoot, I remember wanting to kill myself at the age of 8. So, it's a long haul for me through Funkland. And stories did save my life. I could find hope and encouragement in stories of people going through difficulties—many much worse than mine. I could believe that things would turn out okay, if I just hung on. And stories took my mind off whatever was going wrong with my body. Haven't you been so stuck into some tale that you forget what's around you? It may be escapist, but it's also therapeutic. A story can remind you that trials don't last forever. YOu can overcome. A story can remind you that to be courageous and strong and bear up under terrible things is noble and good and worth attempting. A story can remind you that there is a power beyond that wants to help you. And that people around you can help you. Like they help a narf get home...
Make your story the most resonant and beautiful thing you can. Remember that the mythic and the Biblical can cross paths and add to the power of a story. And learn from LitW that when it's sorta good, it can be better and better, with more revision. (Hey, that's one lesson I got out of it.) It's worth revising 99 times if necessary.
Why?
Because you may be the healer or the protector or the giver of mercy or the provider of aid or the guardian or the one who lays on hands for empowering through that story. I don't know what your particular Holy Spirit endowment is, but I do know that as a writer, you offer something potent when you offer a true and beautiful story. And you might fulfill one of those archetypes, one of those gifts, by writing it. It can sit there until someone who needs it, reads it. Someone like the sickly kid or sickly young woman or sickly middle aged woman like me, who will get to the last line and find that the cloud has lightened or the pain has lessened or a song is rising in her spirit because of what the story had to say.
Because your story might save someone's life.
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Friday, May 04. 2007
Pixy wrote:
I was one of those on the "I LOVED THIS MOVIE" fence. It was magical and wonderful--kind of brought me back to being a kid again.
I love what you say there at the end. What we write is important, and if we don't believe that then what are we doing?
It's so odd that you should say that about stories saving your life. I believe they saved mine too. My books were what kept me going during the darkest time in my life when my world was crashing in around my ears. It was that simple escape into another world and leaving this one that made it bearable.
Wonderful points, Mir!
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Tuesday, May 08. 2007
Mir wrote:
Thanks, Pixy. I figured it was a film you might like. :D
Mir
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Tuesday, May 08. 2007
Mir wrote:
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