When you look through the layers of mystical bullcrap and puffed-up narcissism, what you really see in “The Buried Secret” is a man desperately trying to build and control his own mystique. Because Shyamalan is supposedly so secretive about his filmmaking methods and so nervous about giving Kahn access to his set and his personal life, a lot of “The Buried Secret” takes place far from the production of “The Village.” This might be the single most hubristic element of one of the most hubristic films ever made: it’s a three hour profile of a filmmaker in which the filmmaker himself rarely appears. Apparently, Shyamalan thought his fans were so interested in his life that they’d sit through a three hour film about a guy waiting to talk to him.
There is a universe where M. Night Shyamalan commissioned a three hour-long faux documentary about himself as a marketing stunt. We live in that universe, everybody.
