Jet Li's Fearless & Lady in the Water

Goals for the winter break: finish the bird scene, do the shrine close ups and whatever else we can fit in.

I watched Fearless the other day. I'm really surprised it has such a high metacritic score (70) and got a positive review from Slate. It's a transplant of the classic hero/Jerry Bruckheimer formula into the kung fu genre in which the hero descends into a heterosexual communist pardise of an abyss. Because of where I am in our film, everything I watch seems to be a lesson on structure. It took a looooong time for the hero to get to the abyss. Annoyingly long. We all know it's coming so I wanted the movie to get there faster.

If Fearless is a lesson in conventionality, Lady in the Water is a lesson in awkwardness. Every device used to keep the story moving seems contrived or clumsy. The overall effect is a bland sameness in which watching the film becomes an exercise in keeping up with odd characters with odd names. Portions of the film were surprisingly incompetent. The first appearance of the scrunt made me laugh. It was goofy. Also I'm really tired of scenes in which some character initially doesn't believe in what's happening. We all know it's just a matter of time. Shyamalan didn't seem to have a good handle on Paul Giamatti's character's change of heart.

I guess what's annoying about these films is that we all know that certain plot points are coming up and the filmmakers pretend we don't know that or handle the plot points clumsily. I guess it's just difficult. I'm still working on the "discovery scene" when Ben discovers the clue that takes him out to the desert. The first try--Ben doing a double-take--was just lame. My fault. That sort of thing is virtually unfilmable in this context. My next idea--fly flies from the spinner to the clue. Better, but maybe too cute. Maybe it's better to dispense with the idea of serendipitous surprise altogether. Maybe Ben is just looking through some papers and lo, there's the clue!