I kept going back and forth in late July about whether I wanted to see M. Night Shyamalan's new film, Old (2021) or not. This had nothing to do with personal feelings towards the filmmaker or the film itself. Many of Shyamalan's films have been staples of my cinematic education and have provided me general entertainment over the years. The premise of the feature very much pulled me in from the moment I saw the first Super Bowl ad for it. My reservations regarding the film were exclusive to the fact that I would be starting a new job soon, and I myself had already been mulling over the thought of my own mortality, which is obviously a central theme in this film. How slow life can be when you want it to be fast, but how frightening it can be when it answers your request and speeds things up.
I worried about how much my life was about to change and whether the change would really be for the better. What if I failed? What if I succeeded? Would I be losing too much time away from my family, my friends, my writing? The numerous options that laid before me were feeling like too much to process in the middle of a Pandemic that wasn't quite finished with the world yet. It still isn't. Turning 26 during it all unnerved me to the nth degree, and I didn't know for certain if I wanted to watch a film that would potentially exacerbate those complicated emotions.
But I decided to take a chance because getting older means you have greater opportunities to challenge yourself in ways you couldn't or never even conceived before. In many ways, that is what Shyamalan did himself with this ambitious film.
The films by M. Night Shyamalan take hours to watch but often days to process, regardless of quality. His worlds are so strangely familiar to ours and yet decidedly different that it takes some brains quite some time to decide if they were even worth entering or not. Old was bound to be a polarizing film not only because of who made it but because of the time in which it is being released. As we all slowly but surely are returning to theaters (for now), our options have been quite limited in terms of what there is to watch now that we are back in those beloved seats. Much of what has been released is some form of previously established I.P. Old's release is coupled with that of Black Widow (2021), Jungle Cruise (2021), F9 (2021), Space Jam 2 (2021), nearly all of which are a part of some preexisting franchise. Old is an original story, inspired by a French graphic novel but still untethered to a specific canon. If audiences are going to risk all of the mounting COVID variants for a "fresh" narrative, it better be one worth seeing.
When it comes to aesthetic pleasures, Old delivers aplenty. Michael Gioulakis's cinematography takes us to the sunny beach sides of the Dominican Republic and gives us the escapist freedom that so many were in need of this past year and a half, at least in Act One of the film. As the terrifying events start to unfold and progressively worsen, Gioulakis changes our visual relationship to this vacation paradise. It is suddenly menacingly imposing and inexplicably claustrophobic. Shyamalan's shot choices are often unusual. He shields us from much of the violence (though not all of it), trusting us to create certain images in our minds. We wish that he could give the same amount of trust to us when it comes to the often heavily exposition-ladened dialogue. Actress Nikki Amuka-Bird who plays the supporting role of psychologist Patricia Carmichael seems to have a natural ear for the once acclaimed writer-director's dialogue, and her lines tend to come across the most earnest regardless of her limited screen time. Still, what these characters says matters little in comparison to what they experience. The premise itself lends to the visual, not the auditory. Quite the contrary, as we get older, many of us tend to talk less and pay lesser attention to the words of others. Growing older is about what we see and what others see in us, not so much what they hear.
Old has been accused of packing in too many ideas without enough storytime dedicated to exploring them. Ironically enough, this itself can be seen as a metaphor for the advancing years of life. We try to cram in as much living as we can into the relatively short time that we have on this earth that we don't always pause to appreciate the tiny nuances that life offers us to appreciate as we blaze forward past New Years and Birthdays, Christmases and Funerals. The pregnancy plot in this film definitely could've used more attention and exploration, as could the psychological implications of a child's mind maturing faster than nature ever intended. Certain character relationships would have benefited from more time, such as Chrystal and Kara's mother/daughter bond or Maddox and Mid-Sized-Sedan's emotional connection, but the same can be said for many of the interpersonal relationships in our own lives. It is almost as if Shyamalan has intentionally cut corners to articulate further the idea that what we want out of life, or in this case, a movie, is not always what we get from it. Much of what I expected from my first full-time job has turned out to surprise me. This isn't always a bad thing, but it can often be a difficult truth to grapple with, nonetheless.
This isn't an attempt to justify or sanctify the work of a filmmaker who clearly cares very little about what people think and feels about his artistic vision. Rather, it is a wholehearted attempt to look deeper into a motion picture that raises up so many sensations despite imperfections. Even with evident narrative flaws, Shyamalayn is still able to elicit a sincere emotional reaction from us, awkwardness and all. Why is this? Because we are all getting old, and we don't need an otherworldly beach to get us there any quicker. It is happening with each and every passing day. Watching Shymalan's film might unsettle you. It might even anger you, but at the very least, let it encourage you to take action in life and stop waiting for a tomorrow that is not always guaranteed. Earn your tomorrows by living the most out of your todays; Shyamalan certainly has, and it has awarded him a rich, if not a contentious career that shows no signs of slowing down or withering away anytime soon.
