The comedy movie that “freaked out” M Night Shyamalan: “My jaw dropped”
When he’s on form, there’s nobody quite like M Night Shyamalan. Everyone who saw The Sixth Sense when it first came out remembers how they felt when that insane twist was first revealed, and he’s been able to follow that up with great stuff like Unbreakable, Split, and The Visit. Unfortunately, he’s also responsible for some complete and utter garbage, as anyone who saw his abysmal take on The Last Airbender will attest to.
Apart from his trademark plot swerves, Shyamalan is known for dipping into the supernatural to tell his stories. As well as the aforementioned Sixth Sense and The Visit, he’s taken on all sorts of otherworldly stuff, from a nomadic water sprite (Lady in the Water) to, infamously, a beach that makes you old (Old). They don’t always hit home, but it’s clear from his vast array of spooky creations that the Indian-born director has a fondness for the unusual.
This was confirmed when he gave an interview to Rotten Tomatoes detailing his five favourite films. Alongside Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, and the classic answer of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, Shyamalan spoke about his love for a more obscure piece, Hal Ashby’s 1979 satirical drama Being There.
“Was this a comedy, straight drama, fantasy? I don’t know. It’s so incredible,” he gushed. “This has one of my favourite endings to a movie, just incredible. When he walked on the water, my jaw dropped, I just freaked out, freaked out, that we were making fun of him the whole time, we thought he was an idiot the whole time, thought he was like this mentally handicapped person, and all he was was simple. The things that were happening, and the people that were following him, and the potential future for him, makes sense when you just turn your perspective that way. Bold, bold, bold genre-breaking filmmaking, and will always be kind of a beacon of originality for me.”
Being There stars Peter Sellers as a man named Chance. Having spent his entire life cooped up in a massive house, Chance is forced to step out into the real world once the elderly owner passes away. As Chance has only seen the world through television, he attempts to interact with it in the same way, including trying to click a mugger out of existence with a remote. The movie ends with Chance walking across water, a not-so-subtle nod to Jesus’ miracle of the same nature.
That ending clearly impacted Shyamalan’s storytelling. He is the modern king of the twist ending, which is precisely what Being There offers. The juxtaposition of the ordinary with the supernatural is another regular feature of the modern director’s work.
Shyamalan isn’t the only famous filmmaker to share his love of Ashby’s work. David Fincher named it amongst his favourite movies of all time. It all crops up as a choice of several high-profile actors, from Sandra Bullock to Steve Carell to Cillian Murphy. Its mixture of surreal comedy and genuine heart, combined with the image of Ashby as an underrated genius, makes it a prime candidate for becoming a ‘cult favourite’. The fact that it’s still being talked about over five decades after its release confirms that it has achieved this status.
