The Water Man (2020)
A film by David Oyelowo
It’s time to get real - October is just around the bend, and if you know me you know that means I’ll have a legitimate excuse to do nothing but horror movies regardless of how garbage or great they are - so I’m purposely avoiding doing them for the next two entries of “the weekly movie” to give people a breather in advance. I’ve also felt like I’ve been just bludgeoning people over the head with action movies as of late - so I’m aiming for something different. I had thought originally about trying to tie in to the release of Star Wars: VIsions - which unfortunately came out as a serial show as opposed to the “I now have an excuse to talk about it on the movie reviews” anthology format like Halo, Batman, or even The Matrix did when they did the same thing. So what I settled on is a story of a kid looking for a mythical figure where he’s shown holding a samurai sword on the box art, because seems pretty gnarly to me. Don’t think it’s the boy, tonight we look at The Water Man.
Our story is a heartfelt one that’s been done before - in mostly typical fashion for almost any movie that comes out that makes any modest attempt to be understandable to masses. It’s done well though - I’m not groaning about it like a lot of folks (including myself) did in regards to the story of Avatar (the blue cat alien one) pretty much being a take on Dancing with Wolves. No, it’s done well and you can easily get behind it as at it’s core it’s something that everyone at some point has to come to terms with - looming death and the loss of loved ones. A mother is incredibly sick (leukemia), and her young boy refuses to give up on her, trying everything from hitting the books that would have been way above my reading level at his age to his newest venture - chasing down a mythical man in the woods who quite possibly has the ability to heal or at the very least the capacity to live forever. He enlists the services of a young girl who claims to have seen him - and off they go.
As I mentioned, at it’s core it’s a story about coming to terms with the powerless feeling of loosing someone. It’s shown from a multitude of angles as well - as we also see the dad coping (rather arguably less contained than his son), and the sub-plot tensions between the two as neither one can quite see eye to eye and both essentially has the same worries and feelings about the other. The young girl also comes with her own sub story element about abuse that comes to light on account of the boy’s quest, as does the mythical Water Man with whom the terms of coping and understanding end up being relayed - not simply being a monster or generic man out in the woods but a well executed play on the dangers and powers of unbridled hope that could really be used as a talking point of any number of things much farther reaching than itself.
Now, I want to point something out about this movie’s writing in particular - because every now and then I try to bring it up but I don’t really feel like people ever really quite see what I’m saying because they all have their own takes on it. One of the things I really like about this movie is that they could have literally cast anyone - any genders, any ethnicity, any anything - and the movie would work just as well. This shows some pretty solid writing in my opinion, because it means it’s not relying on the surface level traits of it’s characters to be what the movie is about - it’s not focusing so much on being empowering to any one person, place, or group that it’s to the detriment of the story and philosophy it is trying to get across. It’s a core concept anyone can get behind, and it’s solidly handled such that anyone could insert their own similar situations in and get behind the actions of the protagonists - or even to some extent the Water Man himself.
This guy isn’t human, he’s a humanoid scanner!
That having been said, the actors all did a great job here, and personally I’m happy enough with how it turned out I’m glad each person got the part they got. There’s some good chemistry not just between the family members, but also between the young boy and girl as they go on this journey. When it comes time for the self-realization part of the story, the young main handles it quite well, and although I’m sure the movie or actors would never get the same recognition as some big huge blockbuster movie might, they all do a great job of feeling real as the movie progresses. Of all the stuff in it, the dumbest moment is a classic “have to run away from something and run in the same direction it’s moving instead of just going to the side” that we’ve seen and laughed at countless of other times. Outside of that, they do a wonderful job of emoting with and without lines.
As far as effects go, there doesn’t really feel like a ton of them. Yes, it has that kind of “kid quests for mystical thing” element to it, but it forgoes a lot of it to keep things feeling grounded - to the extent that most of it is easily explained by the final scene in case you didn’t already figure out what was happening. I’ll be honest, although I pretty easily realized what they were doing in one seen, joking to myself about it, I didn’t necessarily see all the particulars of the different revelations coming, and I’m not entirely sure if the movie tricked me by not having lines said like they were at that part, or if my own imagination did exactly what the scene is saying and I really did just fill things in myself to make a completely different narrative in my head about it. Part of that last one is more a play on getting into a character’s mindset - but without rewatching it I won’t really have access to the answers of whose fooling who.
The movie audio is also well done. You hear everything you should, including background nature noise to make things feel lively and realistic. It also has a pretty fun soundtrack - mostly subtitled as “Whimsical” - that at times can lead to being perhaps a bit unintentionally funny like when the score is bellowing and being all epic sounding and it’s just a shot of two kids walking through a field. In reality, it sort of fits with what the movie is trying to impose by the end, which retroactively actually makes it kind of genius now that I think about it. The movie also doesn’t feel like it cheaps out with the ending, making it feel like it’s not looking down at you or watering it down for your particular level of intelligence - and I can also see that as something very appreciable, because in the end you gotta think to yourself - this is technically a family movie given it’s PG rating. Just because it wants you to learn about the harsh realities of the world doesn’t mean it has to be so dark and depressing, that it has to be so dumb and colorful, that it has to treat you like you aren’t a person with a mind capable of reasoning, emotion, and learning.
This kid could exist in so many different things on this picture alone.
Perhaps it seems out of place for me to say this, but really liked this one. Perhaps it’s just the slew of movies I’ve been choosing lately, but the little bit of thinking with a earnest story core that anyone can attach to had a lot more charm than I really would have thought based on the picture of a kid with a katana surrounded by blues and other character faces. If you are looking for something that’s still rather light and enjoyable despite having a heavy heart of a learning story, this one’s a pretty good choice.