Comments (0) |

Shyamalan sticking to same themes, even with R-rating

By David Hiltbrand Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA — As he waits for his beverage at a Starbucks along West Chester Pike, the portly, middle-aged businessman has no idea of the sinister plot being hatched behind his back.

Less than a yard away sits renowned filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan. The master of suspense is gleefully describing how he would set up the oblivious customer for ­cinematic slaughter. ”He's the perfect guy to get taken out,“ Shyamalan says, ”with the hair and the glasses and the suit. All tucked-in. We'd have him maybe talking, trying to get a little ­connection going with the ­barista. And you'd be laughing at this older guy trying to flirt with a younger girl. And you're having fun; you're having fun, and I got you. That's when he'd turn around and WHAM!“

It's a trick Shyamalan pulls off again and again in The Happening, his sixth major ­feature, which opens Friday: lulling the ­audience into a false sense of familiarity before the mundane turns nightmarish.

But because this is the filmmaker's first R-rated release, those thrill-ride twists are more graphic and bloodcurdling, right from the opening sequence.

The movie, which stars Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel as a ­Philadelphia ­couple caught up in a widespread toxic event, demanded heightened violence, ­according to Shyamalan.

”I felt it was the right thing for the screenplay,“ he says. ”I can't keep cramming in the same vocabulary. The movies that I love, that are on the walls in my house — The Godfather, The Exorcist, even Jaws, which I think would get an R-rating today — are made up of visceral, powerful moments punctuating a character's experience.“

Apart from the rating, The Happening has many of the usual Shyamalan trademarks, including its Pennsylvania setting. You can see landmarks from Rittenhouse Square to 30th Street Station to the cooling towers at the Limerick nuclear plant.

Sitting in the coffee shop near his ­Chester County estate, Shyamalan, who looks younger than his 37 years, insists that he might shoot locally, but he's always thinking globally.

He thinks the universality of his themes is a major reason that his films typically do well overseas. His 1999 breakthrough, The Sixth Sense, earned more than $670 million worldwide.

”What they draw out of my work is an international point of view,“ he says. ”I live here in Pennsylvania, which is as American as America gets, but I was born 10,000 miles away in a French province of India, Pon­dicherry. And I have family everywhere. When I was a kid we used to go back to visit, so I got to see London and Singapore and Malaysia and all the places my family lives.“

Of course, in the United States we tend to focus less on aesthetics than on the bottom line. And with the diminishing returns of Shyamalan's most recent projects — 2004's The Village grossed $256 million worldwide, 2006's Lady in the Water just more than $70 million — The Happening is being portrayed in the media as a crucial test of the filmmaker's commercial appeal.

Shyamalan has gained a reputation as the king of the twist ending. But because he generates and shapes his own material, he's never felt bound by any formula.

”All my movie ideas have some kind of spirituality and emotion at the core set against a canvas that is somewhat dark,“ he says. ”Everyone thinks of them as genre films, but I never feel trapped by that.

”If I want comedy, I put it in,“ he says. ”If I want romance, I put it in. Really, all my movies are romance-centered.“

Oh yeah? Tell it to that poor doomed schlub at the Starbucks counter.