Review: OLD

Guy and Priscia are taking their kids to a beach resort. They are working through some marital problems and, because life is complicated, they plan to separate before Priscia's cancer gets too debilitating. All that and it's still not the whole movie. As they settle into some luxury at the hotel they meet a few more couples, all of whom seem to have some sticky problems of their own. Then the maitre d' takes them aside with an offer of an afternoon at a completely unspoiled beach close by. Hard to get to but worth it. They jump at the chance and pile into the van, go through the jungle and get to the place. The driver helps them unload but not carry anything. He has a familiar face which brings me to lesson 1: when you're driven to a special place by M. Night Shyamalan perhaps just turn back as fast as you can. You just won't know where that bus is going to take you. Anyway...

The beach is beautiful and they've been stocked up with masses of supplies. A few more telescoping moments (e.g. the aging doctor's possessiveness of his wife gets creepier the more you see it) and everyone's having a great time, sunbaking, strolling, chilling, and swimming in the water and getting hit by a floating corpse. Huh? The boy screams at the people on the shore and they bring the dead woman back to the beach. She was the rapper's girlfriend. After some mildly paranoid moments from the Doctor they settle, cover the corpse and work out what to do. Meanwhile, Guy and Priscia's kids stand up from their fascination with the dead body and, even seen from behind, have changed. Maddox and Trent, 11 and 6, are now Maddox and Trent, teenagers. Priscia's tumor is getting bigger everytime someone checks it. Time is moving like a jet fighter. Trying to go out the way they came in ends in physical collapse. What to do?

I put off seeing this one as I'd heard it gave in to its own silliness and had the inevitable Shyamalan twist. Also, cinemas weren't the safest places when it was showing. Now I wish I had seen it there. The combination of the intriguing scenario and stunning location along with some very deft audio mixing make it perfect for big screen viewing. Ah well. It was burning a hole in my attention every time the tile appeared in my Prime screen. So, it was already paid for and I dived in.

And the water was fine. Shyamalan makes elegant use of an effectively single-location setting, using it like a large stage and blocks his action with a lithe coreography. Is one character's psychosis too obviously foreshadowed? Are some of the accelerated developments out os synch with others? Is some dialogue absurdly expository? Yes to all but if you catch yourself thinking about any of this while you're watching it you have lost engagement. 

This is not a straight drama or even a heavy science fiction, it's a fable about aging and its effects of self and life's witnesses. As such it runs the range in smooth rhythm to deliver, anxiety, fear, joy, freakish surprise and body horror, love and some of the smidges of wisdom that lie at the end of a long life, especially one that has run for decades into a very few hours. At no point, if you have engaged, is this assumed reality dropped. It's only when the big Shyamalanian twist happens and takes more scenes than you'd expect that you break out of it and have to deal with an intruder. This closes tidily but I had the feeling that it was a few bows too many; I could have done with a little of the lingering doubt and darkness that the rest of the film worked so hard for. So, great reception, let's just watch the cleaners fix it all up before we go home.

This overcatering is typical of Shyamalan but not limited to him. Spielberg is another over-explainer (take the last twenty minutes out of Minority Report and I'm there)  and if this is a result of listening to the wrong public messages or taking test screenings too seriously it's only for me to guess, not know. Whatever it is, it takes the mystery from the tale and has the effect that this is a one-off movie. The reason I return to Eraserhead, Suspiria, The Haunting or Apocalypse Now is that the chaos and violence of the ideas that ensue when I immerse myself in someone else's vision provides a strange comfort, a comfort of unease which allows me to seek resolution within my own mind: that's a conversation between me and screen. 

I'm not so keen on Speilberg but I have loved the best of Shyamalan and am disappointed too often with his extensions beyond what feels like the natural end of the films. It feels like an apology for imagination when I want that very intoxicant to flow freely and virulently into my own. M. Night, old bean, you have (or adapt, in this case) some startling thoughts, leave them loose, and frayed and sticking out. The beauty's in the flaws.

Oh ... the question repeatedly asked by the doctor that never gets answered. The answer is The Missouri Breaks. Didn't hvae to look it up and kept murmuring it to the screen as I watched.