M.Night Shyamalan

Born in India in 1970 but genuinely American, a resident of his beloved Philadelphia since he was a child, Shyamalan was clear from the age of 12 on what he wanted to do in life. A film titled Raiders of the Lost Ark was decisive. The cinema of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas made him crazy, and he became a necessary reference in his goal of being a filmmaker. Like them, he wanted to reach people, to be popular.

A scene from The Sixth Sense sums up Shyamalan’s narrative philosophy. Child psychiatrist Malcolm chats with little Cole, who is very scared. To distract him, he begins to tell a boring tale about a prince who travels in a car. The child interrupts him and says: “You have never told a story before.” And he explains that to capture interest you have to add surprises, like the car running out of gas.

That’s how Shyamalan’s movies are. Director and screenwriter of his stories, he knows how to insert ideas of a certain depth in a genre cinema, a mix of suspense and fantasy. And the resulting dish pleases bomb-proof stomachs and demanding palates. Saying “parents and children, husband and wife, should talk”, “you have to use the talents you have”, “God exists and takes care of you”, “we have to recognize the daily signs that make life bearable”, does not have why be boring The intrigue, the mysteries to be solved, captivate all audiences. Why not use them to talk about everyday things? Family, childhood, communication, faith, death, introspection, are pierced by the ray of the extraordinary. The Banshees of The Sixth Sensethey talk to us about dialogue (“the next time you see a dead person talk to him, ask him what he wants”), the superheroes of El protegido remind us that we all have qualities to discover, the cleric who has lost faith in Signs challenges us to correctly interpret the reality that surrounds us.

A born storyteller, heir to the master Alfred Hitchcock in his handling of suspense resources, a trademark of the filmmaker consists in offering a surprising ending, a light that forces us to reread the films from the beginning, paying attention to unexpected revelations. His confessed model for this purpose are titles like Psycho and Planet of the Apes .

It wasn’t always like this. In First Friends she tackled a fascinating story: the search for God undertaken by a boy whose grandfather has just passed away. Aside from creative differences with producer Harvey Weinstein, had to endure the label in The New York Times as a religious propagandist. Shyamalan drew a lesson from there: “You can’t work with the assumption that the public, whoever it is, has the same feelings as you, or shares your value system or whatever. So if you want to capture that, you have a lot of work ahead of you when it comes to fleshing out the film. How do you talk to them and say ‘Let’s create a world’? With the language and film media, and what I have written, what can I do to make that person feel closer to my way of seeing things? The answer, in his movies.