David O'ConnellWide Awake
December 11th 2009 03:27
What exactly happened to stylish auteur M. Night Shyamalan between this pre-Sixth Sense dalliance with PG-rated subject matters and the start of his deliriously successful run of pull-the-carpet-out-from-unde r-the-audience trickery? In Wide Awake, a young Catholic boy, Josh Beal (Joseph Cross), goes in search of God after the death of the most influential person in his life, his grandfather (Robert Loggia).
Young Josh is plagued by confusion, unable to reconcile the existence of God with the loss of someone so meaningful to him. A quest is sparked: to track down evidence of God in the world; ostensibly to give the Almighty One a stern talking to whilst receiving confirmation that his beloved Grandpa is in safe hands and lives on beyond this world.
In limited flashbacks we see Josh and Grandpa together in the last months after the diagnosis of his cancer. It’s a troubling time for a 10 year old, struggling to come to grips with a reality that seems just beyond his grasp. How do you broach such a sensitive topic with a child anyway - or worse, justify the whims of fate or the master plan of a benevolent creator? Josh needs to hear Grandpa’s assurances that God really exists because after all, a lot of important figures in his life, like Superman and Indiana Jones, are just made up.
Shyamalan’s boldest creative stroke is his heavy reliance on Josh’s narration, in the form of journal entries, to act as a guiding light for the audience. Everything is seen from the boy’s perspective and consequently his strait-laced, genial parents (played by Dana Delany and Dennis Leary in a curious piece of casting) remain sketchily-drawn figures dissolving into the background for much of the film. Only Rosie O'Donnell as a nun and one of Josh's teachers makes a minor impression.
Much of the film is spent in Josh’s school and on his relationship with best friend Dave (Timothy Reifsnyder), a daredevil whose occasionally outrageous behaviour is a constant source of admiration, helping to offset the trauma and irrationality of Grandpa’s absence from the world.
Visually, Wide Awake is fairly unremarkable; the impressive stylistic sheen and technical prowess of Shyamalan's later films are still in a developmental stage here. Edmund Choi's score is an ultimately moving, melodic one but seems to draw heavily on James Horner as an influence.
Ultimately, Shyamalan’s relatively unknown second feature is a winner. Yes it’s guilty of earnestness that seems forced as well as occasionally corny, self-conscious humour. It may even seem in danger of transplanting quirkiness with caricature once in a while, but there’s power in its beguiling simplicity. Wide Awake generally remains an even-handed, sensitive insight into childhood whilst tackling that difficult dark terrain of mortality with a deft light touch. It rings with a certain truthfulness and the fact that Shyamalan draws such a startlingly natural performance from his young star is a huge factor in its success.
It's a significant point because let’s be honest, witnessing the ropey, wooden performances of his last film, The Happening, only re-emphasised how often Shyamalan places the value of style and craft over trivial matters such as acting. But here, Cross is solely responsible for making this an endearing fable, and if the peculiar revelation of the final scene teaches us anything, it’s that Wide Awake, despite its PG subject matter, really is a M. Night Shyamalan film after all.
Young Josh is plagued by confusion, unable to reconcile the existence of God with the loss of someone so meaningful to him. A quest is sparked: to track down evidence of God in the world; ostensibly to give the Almighty One a stern talking to whilst receiving confirmation that his beloved Grandpa is in safe hands and lives on beyond this world.
In limited flashbacks we see Josh and Grandpa together in the last months after the diagnosis of his cancer. It’s a troubling time for a 10 year old, struggling to come to grips with a reality that seems just beyond his grasp. How do you broach such a sensitive topic with a child anyway - or worse, justify the whims of fate or the master plan of a benevolent creator? Josh needs to hear Grandpa’s assurances that God really exists because after all, a lot of important figures in his life, like Superman and Indiana Jones, are just made up.
Shyamalan’s boldest creative stroke is his heavy reliance on Josh’s narration, in the form of journal entries, to act as a guiding light for the audience. Everything is seen from the boy’s perspective and consequently his strait-laced, genial parents (played by Dana Delany and Dennis Leary in a curious piece of casting) remain sketchily-drawn figures dissolving into the background for much of the film. Only Rosie O'Donnell as a nun and one of Josh's teachers makes a minor impression.
Much of the film is spent in Josh’s school and on his relationship with best friend Dave (Timothy Reifsnyder), a daredevil whose occasionally outrageous behaviour is a constant source of admiration, helping to offset the trauma and irrationality of Grandpa’s absence from the world.
Josh (Joseph Cross) with his mum (Dana Delany)
Visually, Wide Awake is fairly unremarkable; the impressive stylistic sheen and technical prowess of Shyamalan's later films are still in a developmental stage here. Edmund Choi's score is an ultimately moving, melodic one but seems to draw heavily on James Horner as an influence.
Ultimately, Shyamalan’s relatively unknown second feature is a winner. Yes it’s guilty of earnestness that seems forced as well as occasionally corny, self-conscious humour. It may even seem in danger of transplanting quirkiness with caricature once in a while, but there’s power in its beguiling simplicity. Wide Awake generally remains an even-handed, sensitive insight into childhood whilst tackling that difficult dark terrain of mortality with a deft light touch. It rings with a certain truthfulness and the fact that Shyamalan draws such a startlingly natural performance from his young star is a huge factor in its success.
It's a significant point because let’s be honest, witnessing the ropey, wooden performances of his last film, The Happening, only re-emphasised how often Shyamalan places the value of style and craft over trivial matters such as acting. But here, Cross is solely responsible for making this an endearing fable, and if the peculiar revelation of the final scene teaches us anything, it’s that Wide Awake, despite its PG subject matter, really is a M. Night Shyamalan film after all.
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