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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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The Village I'm going to be honest: I'm a pretty big fan of writer / director M. Night Shyamalan. The Sixth Sense is in my top ten list of all time, Unbreakable was a breath of artistic fresh air in a stale industry, and Signs delivered on its thrills in conjunction with a more important message. And so of course, I had high expectations for The Village. After all, this movie took two years to make and reportedly Shyamalan had a whole lot more "great ideas" going into it than anything he's done before. As the movie opens, we are in an 1897 village of several families who wish to live in peace and solitude. They are surrounded by woods where frightening creatures threaten to terrorize them. Apparently they have made a truce to keep these creatures from invading, however. Well, it looks like the truce is ending. As far as characters we've got Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard), a blind girl who is interested in Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix), an adventurous young man who would like to travel outside of the village to get medicine to help the people. Edward Walker (William Hurt) is Ivy's father and one of the founders of the village while Noah Percy (Adrien Brody) is a mentally troubled (perhaps autistic) young man who also has an interest in Ivy. From the beginning we get the very sincere impression that this film exists to scare the crap out of us. What lies in the woods and why should we be so scared of it? We're not really sure, but by golly we're ready to be scared. So strike up the frightening music and build the suspense. Come on and get us good Mr. Shyamalan. At least, that's kind of what my opening thoughts were like. But instead we're greeted with a way too long costume drama for more than half of the movie with a building threat in the background. Perhaps this would work if the characters were easier to feel for. The dry dialog and stiff acting don't really help in this department, though. I reasoned, "It's okay. I know this will get better because there's something being hidden here that we don't know about." Sure enough there is. There are a building number of surprises in store that finally give some meaning to what we're seeing. And indeed the big grand surprise is far from anything we could be expecting. Perhaps a reason for that is because we didn't think M. Night Shyamalan would be willing to even consider this kind of conclusion to one of his films. Well, think again. My conclusion is that M. Night Shyamalan has (ghasp!) sadly sold out. He's so entrenched in his big twist ending that he forgets we'd like to have a decent movie to watch while he's building up to it. Even worse, once he does surprise us (in more ways than one this time) he has to pound us over the head with non stop voice overs to spell out point by point exactly what he's been hiding all this time. As the credits rolled, I honestly felt cheated and manipulated. I remarked to a friend that if it's possible to be raped by a movie, that's just about what happened to me. Once you see how this all unfolds it begs the question, "What in the world was the big deal about all of this?" Why did we have to be built up to the bursting level, ready to be scared when really the music was the only thing building suspense in the first place? Why God, why? Of course, it's not God's fault. Maybe this is his way of showing that no one's perfect. To be fair, M. Night Shyamalan was certainly due for a misstep with a career that has been mostly brilliant so far. No one's perfect, but let's hope that Shyamalan can step out of this funk and get over himself before something like this happens again. In all fairness, there were certainly some good elements to The Village too. Roger Deakins as cinematographer was (as always) a great thing. Granted, you could almost feel Shyamalan's breath on his neck with "show this, don't show that because I want to use it in a crappy flashback when the audience realizes they've been tricked." Bryce Dallas Howard does a fantastic job in her role, delivering with conviction and emotion. And William Hurt even showed some spirit late in the film if you can quench your anger toward Night for a few minutes to appreciate some solid acting. Driving home with a bunch of people in the car, I hit the steering wheel with my hand and exclaimed, "Man, I'm dealing with some conflicted emotions right now!" In retrospect The Village was kind of clever with some good elements, but handled totally in the wrong way. Lucky thing we don't actually see M. Night Shyamalan's face in his cameo late in the movie or we might be tempted to boo at the screen. Trae Cadenhead 8/8/2004
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