Night8217;s Day

The American public said much the same thing by ringing in 100 million in receipts over the three weeks the movie topped the charts, making it the hottest faring film for any August. They might as well have called him Hot August Night. From all accounts, there was no sixthsense involved in conceiving the hit film.

Night Shyamalan, 28, knew where he was headed from the moment he put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, two years back. 8220;I8217;m going to direct a film called Sixth Sense with Bruce Willis in the lead,8221; he is reported to have told a colleague, while they were still shooting for Wide Awake, his second film. 8220;I don8217;t know really anything more about it other than it8217;s about a kid who sees ghosts.8221; Evidently, Night himself saw a lot more.

When the screenplay came to life after many rewrites a year later, Night hawked it to Disney8217;s Hollywood Films for a record 3 million with two conditions that made even the most hardened studio types sit bolt upright. This new kid on the block, with only two modest films under his belt, insisted that he should direct the film; and it should be set in his adopted hometown, Philadelphia. 8220;Philadelphia inspires me. In Philly, I have direct access to my childhood feelings,8221; Night Shyamalan said in an interview lastyear to his hometown paper, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Miramax honcho Harry Weinstein is comparing him to Frank Capra. 8220;Night has great humanity,8221; he gushed to the Inquirer, saying when he first read Wide Awake, 8220;I heard my mother8217;s voice say to me, make this movie.8221;

That, however, wasn8217;t what Manoj Shyamalan8217;s parents said to him as he grew up he took the middle name Night8217; after being influenced by American-Indian culture. Night8217;s parents were typical Indian folk. His mother Jayalakshmi, an obstetrician, and his father Nelliote Shyamalan, a cardiologist, met in medical school in India before emigrating to the US in the 1960s. They returned to Pondicherry for Manoj8217;s birth, and as he grew up in Philly, the hoped he would follow in their footsteps in medicine. But while his parents put in 12-hour days at work, Night came home to a parent-free, fantasy-filled home.

His dad had a Bell amp; Howell 8 mm camera that he started fooling around with when he was barely ten. He filmedstories in the neighbourhood by day and wrote screenplays by night. When he finally declared at 18 to his parents that he wanted to be a filmmaker they blew a gasket. He went to the film school in New York University, where one of the requirements to graduate was completion of a screenplay. While his classmates were still struggling with theirs, Night was negotiating with investors to make his Wide Awake into a regular full length film. It did not pan out at that time. Wide Awake was put to sleep while Night went to work on his debut film Praying With Anger, a 750,000-project starring himself in the lead role as an Indian-American youth who returns to Madras to explore his roots long before Kukunoor and Gustad. Although the film won good notices at the Toronto film festival, the raspberries in the US media ensured it closed like mousetrap on the commercial circuit. Still trying to peddle Wide Awake, he wrote Labour of Love, which was immediately snapped up for 750,000.It did not require a sixth sense to know his career was made from here on.

But it is Sixth Sense that has electrified the movie world and the audiences. Described as a cross between The Exorcist and Ordinary People, the movie deals with the visions of a ten-year old child and a psychologist8217;s attempts to deal with it. What sets Night Shyamalan8217;s movie apart is that it goes far beyond being just a horror film; it is a many-layered psychological thriller with a mindbending ending.

One of the most sensitive aspects of the film is the manner in which Night deals with the loneliness and trauma of a single child 8212; a feeling he confesses to being familiar with when he grew up in Philly. 8220;I still think of myself has a ten-year old,8221; he says In fact, God and spirituality are recurrent themes in his two main movies, and although a practising Hindu, his catholic schooling has evidently left its imprint. 8220;I feel fondly about Catholic school. It gave structure,8221; he said in oneinterview.

For now though Sixth Sense is what has given structure to a career that seems to have no limits. He is already said to be working on his next film, described as a dark story with a Hitchcockian feel, which is what could be said of Sixth Sense too. A good night8217;s sleep is the last thing on your mind when you see the Sixth Sense, and the next one seems no different.

8212; CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA