In the case of movie maker M. Night Shyamalan, whose films seamlessly blend entertainment and enlightenment, these two meanings are united in unique and exhilarating ways. This, along with Shyamalan's increasingly deft use of light and darkness and his ability to capture images reflected from windows and mirrors, lends a moody, otherworldly feel to his films, a feel that's entirely appropriate to the metaphysical mysteries he routinely explores. Price spent much of his childhood in bed reading comic books. Price is the film's moral center and the source of some of its most provocative lines. These are mediocre times,'' he says at one point.
People start to lose hope.
Perhaps you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing,'' he urges. For Shyamalan, the son of two Indian physicians, matters of body and soul have always been inextricably linked. His parents routinely talked shop in the family's home, which featured a shrine decorated with statues of the Hindu gods Shiva and Krishna, as well as various ancestral deities. As a child, Shyamalan regularly communed with the dead and seemed unusually sensitive to the thoughts and emotions of the living. Around the time he was 10, Shyamalan first picked up a camera, and the theology in his films is as eclectic as his own upbringing.