Making worlds

I'm still thinking about Lady in the Water. The one thing about Shyamalan's work that I find really annoying is the way that his film worlds bend to fit the script. Why does Story wear Cleveland Heep's shirt throughout the film? Well, because it emphasizes her waifish nature of course. But Bryce Dallas Howard's cinematically meaty legs side, it just seems silly to me. Couldn't Heep make a stop at the Gap? I had the same problem with The Sixth Sense. If that kid is so afraid of dead people, why is he always sitting in the dark? Why do the ghosts always look like the the most gruesome moments of their deaths? The answer is obvious--it's dramatic license. I understand that, but somehow, I find these discrepancies annoying. Note that I'm not saying that everything has to be explained. That would fill a movie with exhausting narrative minutae ("Sorry, Story, everything else is at the cleaners and, uh, my credit card is maxed out...")

I think there are different reasons for this problem. One is the difficulty of translating from script into screen. Sure everything reads well on paper then you have to go film it and the character has got to be wearing something. Or those doors in Monsters Inc.... I'm probably the only one who finds the third act door chase annoying because the door rails don't allow for efficient random access. The only reason that dry cleaner mechanisms work is because someone plucks the clean clothes from the rail. But in the battle between drama and sense, drama wins every time.



I think it comes down to what it means to make a world. World-making and film-making are two different things. In commercial filmmaking, the film usually takes precedence. But it is possible to imagine a film in which the world is consistent and internally coherent. Perhaps we should be reluctant to describe most filmmakers--bound as they are by the needs of their drama or audience--as makers of worlds. Perhaps it is more accurate to describe them as creators of novel dramatic situations. In my case, one of the reasons I think I'm creating a narrative and not a drama is that the world takes precedence over drama.