Its opening weekend now over and done with, we can more or less surmise that After Earth will mark another troublesome point in the career of M. Night Shyamalan. A critical drubbing was expected and, by this point, almost a little tiresome, but its box office intake is a far more glum signifier: outside of the little-seen commercial debut Wide Awake, its $27 million intake is a number that only puts it above The Sixth Sense, a film which had earned around $1 million less during its own debut — fourteen years ago. (This is a likely point of concern for Will Smith, too, but we’re not here to discuss him.)
And while there’s plenty of room to debate the reactions themselves — i.e., if a majority of these come from actual displeasure with After Earth as a work, or if some (though certainly not all) critics feel shades of temerity in the treatment of two stars and a director who, to their eyes, have accrued plenty of reasons to take out the knives — it’s better to look at Shyamalan himself, more specifically what the film says about his place as an auteur. It’s evident that many would bristle at such a classification, but, no matter how contentious his post-Signs output remains — no matter what you make of all that came before, too — After Earth, both in spite and because of its many flaws, displays the survival of a distinctive voice in American cinema.
Which, again, would not suddenly elevate his Will and Jaden Smith-starrer to an entirely new point of qualitative worth; this doesn’t make the movie any good, even. The argument mounted here is not some silly attempt to reclaim it as a great piece of sci-fi storytelling or entirely cohesive work of formal exertion. What matters is that a conversation exists in the first place; be it the director’s own stubbornness in the retention of preferred tools — the ways in which they decidedly do and do not work — the result that is After Earth stands as a decidedly unusual entry into the summer season.
This may explain why, in the current multiplex climate, so much of the film strikes as an altogether odd experience. We could start with an oft-forgotten ingredient in Shyamalan’s cinema, ever so evident here: the emphasis on silence. Whether it’s through means of the supernatural or human discord, a central character in any of his works will, inevitably, endure some sort of trauma which locks them out from basic person-to-person interaction. This insistence on reserved interaction befits thrillers rather amply, but the sort of character and flavor it lends to After Earth is a more complicated matter. Whereas a majority of summer blockbusters have become heavily, unfortunately reliant on constant noise as some means of maintaining energy — think of the sounds that ratchet around: off-screen machinery, a composed score — Shyamalan takes a riskier step, sucking out nearly all sound, non-diegetic or not, to an almost awkward degree. Should we be discussing The Sixth Sense or Signs, it would ring as a typical attempt to lend additional dramatic heft where Shyamalan feels necessary. Its usage, here, is to the same end; the problem is what a movie in the vein of After Earth would normally require for its own functioning.
The strategy doesn’t pay off, then, though it’s nonetheless troubling to see as cold a reaction toward distinctive methods of delivery as this film has received. While it’s understandable that Shyamalan’s strategy would instead calculate as inept, saying so would be to incorrectly imply that this is a Last Airbender-esque loss of control; it’s merely difficult to apply to the template which a script (not of his own devising) has provided. With this context, such application stands as nearly irrelevant to whether or not the effect happens to land. In an increasingly homogenized and stale blockbuster environment littered with pitiful attempt after pitiful attempt at establishing meaningful character arcs through pure noise — need I raise the sight and sound of Zachary Quinto shouting “Khan!” as a Michael Giacchino score blares out of loudspeakers? — granting anyone the chance to simply “be,” unencumbered from instituted chaos, is just the least bit refreshing.
Better yet, but also more problematically, this aural strategy extends to Shyamalan’s patient visual language. Perhaps an ample point of comparison would be the previous blockbuster this writer had viewed: the aforementioned Star Trek Into Darkness, in which J.J. Abrams felt it necessary to deliver thrills with a camera so manic that it could barely remain still during a simple conversation sequence. Compared to such now-common tactics, After Earth feels hugely alien in the summer market; and converse to quick cutting schemes that have been a staple of nearly all mainstream cinema in the post-millennial era, Shyamalan further reveals himself as something of a classicist in the approach and execution of individual happenings. If the man can be said to have kept any of that much-touted Spielberg influence of his early days, it’s allowing entire exchanges to carry out in languid, naturalistic rhythms, the type which sink in instead of uncomfortably propelling. Not the worst quality to inherit.
But Spielberg chooses smarter scripts, and yours truly is blind to the concept of directorial graces that are so powerful as to entirely shift the paradigm on poor characterization and a pair of middling performances (neither of which are aided by the vaguely Cajun accents afforded to every character). After Earth is not a very good film — despite some kind words, it’s unlikely that this writer ever watches it again — but once storytelling flaws eventually arise, how we happen to approach Shyamalan is a muddy issue. For as much as you can lob at what’s on the page, a script had originally been written by another (Gary Whitta) given a pass by himself, and then polished yet again with outside hands — this instance being one more notable talent: Stephen Gaghan, writer of Traffic and Syriana — is absolutely impossible to weigh in a single personal context.
Shyamalan remains a problematic-at-best storyteller, and his continued blending of the terrifying with the mawkish comes to fail him on that front once more. While After Earth is a stumble, as an additional step in a filmography its place should not be discounted. In a studio system which continues to emphasize some vague idea of “a good script” far over any inventiveness or transgressions in visual schemes — take the frequently flat Marvel series as a key example of stale palettes’ rise — the need to appreciate a helmer of Shyamalan’s example is, in fact, becoming more crucial by the summer season.
Do you agree that Shyamalan is a desirable voice in Hollywood? What are your thoughts on After Earth?