Zade Rosenthal Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan sets up a shot on location during filming of "The Happening." |
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| | 'The Happening' Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel are on the run after a mysterious event begins to wipe out cities. Buena Vista Pictures |
"I'm the No. 1 culprit," he admitted.
The 37-year-old, Indian-American writer-director is best-known for his 1999 film "The Sixth Sense," an Oscar-nominated ghost story with an unusual twist. The film invited comparisons with the works of the past generation's master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.
Such high expectations can be a curse as well as a blessing. The movies that Shyamalan wrote and directed since then — "Unbreakable," "Signs," "The Village" and "Lady in the Water" — didn't quite match the acclaim that greeted "The Sixth Sense." His latest movie has gotten mixed reviews. Nevertheless, the first weekend's box-office receipts added up to a respectable $30 million.
Shyamalan's movies often contain the stuff of science fiction: the paranormal in "The Sixth Sense," superpowers in "Unbreakable" and crop-circle-making aliens in "Signs." But "The Happening" is a different kind of science fiction, grounded in worries over what humans are doing to the environment - and what the environment could do in response.
In a wide-ranging interview, I asked Shyamalan about his environmental-themed horror movie, his attitudes toward science-laced storytelling, and even his next movie. Here's an edited transcript of the Q&A:
Cosmic Log: You’ve said that, with “The Happening,” you wanted to do a simple thriller as opposed to some of the movies you’ve done in the past, which have had more of a twist to them. On the other hand, it seems to me as if this movie is really meant to be an environmental message movie. So is it simple, or complex?
Shyamalan: Well, structurally, it’s just about characters trying to survive – and really being, for 90 minutes, in the shoes of trying to experience this bizarre event. What it would feel like to not understand it and try to maneuver through it, and just to feel the paranoia. Really, that was the goal at the end of the day: feeling paranoia about something you can’t see and is much greater than you, and just dealing with that for 90 minutes.
The unusual face of the villain is the “big idea” of the movie, but not necessarily the complexity with regard to structure.
Q: The movie did remind me of “Night of the Living Dead,” and a lot of people have talked about “The Birds.” Did you have any sense that this movie might be playing off the environmental questions, and the paranoia about where we’re going on the earth, as opposed to the paranoia about the Cold War?
A: Yeah. Ideally, a B-movie makes you enjoy the silliness of the ride, and the movie’s premise revels in the silliness of it, so there should be a lot of humor and not a lot of taking itself seriously – and then it reminds you of a feeling, about something that you were bothered by in real life. In this case … this is ludicrous, right? There’s just no way this could possibly happen. Plants and trees, they don’t communicate! Then, slowly, there’s the vague outline of a larger presence. It’s kind of scary.
We’re almost like primitive man again. If we were primitive man, and our houses got wiped out by some storm, we would be in awe of it, you know? In a way, we’re learning that awe again these days as nature does its thing. It’s a balancing act. It’s kind of like, “Oh, yeah, I remember … I’ve lost my way in terms of thinking about nature.”
Q: You started out the “ride” with a reference to Colony Collapse Disorder. Do you think people picked up on the mystery of bee disappearances? And of course you show the [purported] Einstein quote [that if bees disappeared from the earth, humanity would have “only four years of life left.”] Is that how you began putting together the movie?
A: It was in the early stages of writing the script that the first person sent me a bee article – before anybody knew about it, whatever paper it was first mentioned in. And I said, “Wow, this is exactly the tonality I’m looking for.” Something seemingly innocuous – however, it seems to have very large implications. This isn’t happening in a little corner of one town, it’s happening across the country, and even beyond the country. Is there something that’s linking the whole system together, that’s making them work as one thing?
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Q: You’ve also referred to James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis, I was wondering whether you could explain that in your own words how you understand that hypothesis and – without giving away the plot – how it figures in the movie.
A: Well, there’s a guy who threw out this idea in the ’60s that the earth is a system. That it is a living thing, in and of itself. And it will defend itself. If we are seen as a threat, it will take steps to address that threat, just as nature does with anything. It can adapt. To assume that nature cannot adapt is probably a bad assumption.
Q: And that’s the driving force for moving the action in the film – the idea that nature is actually a character.
A: Yeah. One of the many possibilities that’s thrown out in the movie is this theory. It’s so out there. These things we see as benevolent could not possibly be malevolent. How could they be? If you can reach that moment – that the killer doesn’t necessarily have to have knives on his hands with blood dripping down, that it could be a beautiful flower … the irony of that! It’s an idea that you have to get your head around.
I’m the No. 1 culprit of that – forgetting that there’s a greater power that’s not in the religious books. It’s right here, it’s right out my window. I’m watching it right now, as the trees sway. There’s a great, great force there.
'The Happening' Haunts the Air
M. Night Shyamalan takes on the end of the world
The opening movement of "The Happening" is a virtuoso guitar solo of alarm. It's the sharpest collection of footage writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has ever committed to the screen, launching his latest picture on a giddy note of assured doom -- a chilling introduction to the human race's greatest adversary: the unknown.
More.
NVDL: My story, HOLIDAY has a similar theme - horror, making mother nature and the unknown the stars of the show.
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