The Bigger Idea in Hollywood: Rise of Nolan and Fall of Shyamalan

There always seems to be an unbalance of twos when it comes to talent in the higher echelons of art. In some cases, it's the synonymous relationship between two minds that think virtually alike and go down in history together as having a mysterious creative bond. In other cases, there may be two individuals who think alike, but with a lone champion who ultimately gets all the name recognition for the rest of time. The one who gets canceled out has some sort of creative decline that can either be explained as inherent creative disability or perhaps just due to declining health.

Or, sometimes the reason behind the decline is too deep to be explained in a general sense.

Such is the case between writer/directors M. Night Shyamalan and Christopher Nolan in a town where the scope of their ideas is all too rare today.

When Shyamalan first rode into Hollywood with "The Sixth Sense" in 1999, what was overlooked at first behind the cleverness of the concept was a true idea; a big idea. While dipped in a Hitchcockian glaze, it was an idea that arrived in a newly dry desert within mainstream movie studios where assembly line, green-lighted retreads were just beginning. Not only was Shyamalan bringing big ideas, he was bringing profound ideas that delved into the realms of the spiritual unknown if not convincingly linking that world with the scientific unknown.

By the time Shyamalan made his next two films "Unbreakable" and "Signs", it was clear he had a vision of where he was taking his movies. It was going into territory seldom if ever explored in American movies in not only studying the concepts of mythology but the even deeper realms of spirituality. With his own admittance that he meditated frequently while writing his screenplays, it was clear Shyamalan was channeling from a wellspring of deep ideas that didn't necessarily have to be branded to fiction.

Concurrently during Shyamalan's peak, Christopher Nolan was just releasing "Memento" in 2000 that also challenged how we perceive a movie. Arguably, it was a gimmick in its idea of telling a story nonlinearly from the end to the beginning. Nevertheless, it was a tidal wave of thinking to a certain limit that creates the worst kind of path to a creative brick wall. Nolan seemed to be allowing himself time to breathe in his own unknown creative writing exercises.

Certainly if anybody else had made "Signs", it'd be a major challenge to follow up. If arguable, it was probably the last movie Shyamalan made that reached the highest peak of higher thinking with clarity. 2004's "The Village" seemed to be the moment in time when he assimilated an idea that mysteriously left audiences feeling lost upon execution. All of this happened while Nolan was getting ready to draw bigger audiences with "Batman Begins" and "The Prestige."

The intersection of two similar talents was underway. And the odd obstruction or disconnect within the idea pipeline had begun in one of them.
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Any similarities to Shyamalan and Nolan may be sheer coincidence other than that they were born far from America (India and U.K.) in the same year (1970) and only seven days apart. They also both turned 40 at the time of this writing. The fact that they both ended up becoming the two deepest thinkers in Hollywood during the 21^st century seems preordained, even though the methods of how they did their thinking is more a source of debate. Whatever pipeline they chose to use, nobody can claim any of them as definitive methods of tapping into something greater.

Shyamalan has never really explained what was going on in his head when he did those clandestine meditation exercises to mine for his movie ideas. Whether it was a product of his faith or merely a never-ending pipeline of ideas from birth that was taken for granted, the stream of brilliance was said to be atrophied by the time "Lady in the Water" hit theatres in 2006. At the core was a potentially great idea that became muddled in deeper metaphors and mythology that ruined any sense of clarity for audiences to gain anything from. That became progressively worse through "The Happening" and, most recently, "The Last Airbender."

Some fans of Shyamalan who stood by his side pointed out that his plots had merely delved so deep that most average people couldn't comprehend them. If that's the case, then this was an obstruction of an idea by complication rather than breaking it down to understandability without being too simplistic.

But then there's that latest triumph from Shyamalan's creative nemesis, Christopher Nolan. This year's "Inception" became one of the most perplexing movies made since the days of Shyamalan's peak. Yet the wide difference is that Nolan taps into the deep regions of the human being rather than dealing with mythology and how it ties in metaphorically with modern times. Through "The Dark Knight" and "Inception", Nolan has started a new type of deep idea that's hidden in the subconscious and forces us on a journey through the paths of our minds until we discover it.

Yes, as with all those other creative twos throughout history, one side has to fall due to the embrace by the populace at large. Look to Salieri v. Mozart; Levant v. Gershwin; Edison v. Tesla. In many of those historical cases, the person who fell didn't necessarily deserve it. If the world has gained by studying history, then Shyamalan should be able to diagnose what's happened to his creative pipeline and fix it. Ironically, it could be a movie plot for another Shyamalan movie:

An unknown monster enters the thoughts of the most creative writer in Hollywood. Brilliant ideas come out jumbled and nonsensical. The creative writer has to find a way to enter his mind and battle the monster to get it out of there before the writer's reputation is ruined. It's implied the writer's old creative meditation techniques invited the monster in when a more benign entity was trying to get in all along.

It may turn out that Shyamalan pulls a Nolan and ends up showing us what may be inside every human being who pushes for clarity through their creativity.