This morning’s announcement that M Night Shyamalan will be the jury president of the 72nd Berlin Festival took a few people by surprise.
“Isn’t he a hack?” one friend messaged me this morning.
No, actually, he is not. The guys over at Cahiers du Cinema have been champions of Shyamalan’s movies for many years now. They even included “Split” in their list of the ten best movies of 2017. Yes, his filmography isn’t perfect — Lady in the Water? The Last Airbender? After Earth? — but the French infatuation with Shyamalan seems to have to do with his being a sort of heir to Hitchcock (another director whose films polarized US critics and was loved by zee French).
Shyamalan is an artist who self-finances his own personal projects, has a solid fan base of fans and a very distinct voice within the cinematic spectrum. Then again, his two best movies — “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable” — happened back-to-back during the very start of his career.
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