FAITH IN SCIENCE and reason is at its lowest ebb since the Enlightenment. At least that's the conclusion of a recent op-ed in New Scientist magazine, which reported that 42 per cent or more of the US population alone are turning to fundamentalist religions and fringe beliefs such as magic. There, at a stroke, may be the reason for the rising number of pseudo-religious films such as The Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at the cinema.
The latest entry in what's becoming a cultural battlefield in the US is Lady in the Water, a new movie from Indian-American filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, who's probably best known for directing the taut psychological thriller The Sixth Sense. Perhaps more childish than childlike, Lady in the Water is a story of redemption and spiritual transformation, which melds mystical fantasy to a rough urban setting. Those of a religious persuasion will find the film a bit of a lark at best. But wounded souls looking for alternative routes to spiritual salvation will probably lap up its esoteric messages.
Like many entertainers, Shyamalan had a desire to create something for his children, and Lady in the Water started as a fairy tale he made up for his daughters at bedtime. The tale begins in a shabby apartment complex where the building manager, Cleveland Heep (played by Paul Giamatti) works hard to expunge a terrible memory.
Strange goings on in the swimming pool lead to the discovery of a water waif named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), who belongs to a race of ethereal underwater creatures who must solve cryptic puzzles to enable their metaphysical transformation by means of a giant eagle. Story's problem is that vicious wolf-like creatures are charged with the task of killing her before the transformation can take place. Heep has to help Story solve the puzzles as well as keep the evil creatures at bay. To do this, he has to find certain spiritual types in the apartment complex - the Guardians, the Vessel, and so on. Only when all this is done correctly will the giant eagle be able to swoop down and transform the water nymph into her manifest destiny.
Shyamalan, who went to a Catholic school and generally gives his characters redemptive storylines, scatters big dollops of Catholic sentiment all through Lady in the Water. Live your life the correct way, the film says, and you'll be redeemed and transformed by the power of God. But at a press event the director denied there's any Christian element to his film, and went as far as to say that he thought 'religion was in its death throes, and will be gone in 50 years'.
But the next morning, during an interview in New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, he backtracks. There are Christian symbols in the film, he admits, although a lot of them are actually more connected to Star Wars.
'I remember that watching Star Wars was a kind of religious experience for me,' says 36-year-old Shyamalan. 'I think I got from that film what other people get from religion. It created a whole mythology, and mythologies, like religion, are ancient ways of understanding what's going on in the world.
