The 1900 House Meets Hitchcock
By Tony Fonseca
01/17/2005
The Village. M. Night Shyamalan. 2004.
M. Night Shyamalan's movies are quickly becoming events. At least a month before The Village was released, bulletin boards were abuzz with what the new twist would be, whether or not the advertised "creatures" in the woods seen in all the early trailers were actual monsters. I even read some discussion strings where people were examining closely just how a makeup specialist was listed in the Internet Movie Database to determine whether or not he has developed costumes for people, or had created an alien of some sort. Then, knowing I was going to catch the film this weekend (Shyamalan is the only director whose every movie I have seen in the theater, and I intend to see them all), I started looking at other reviews and reading more bulletin board discussions. I learned a few lessons:
LESSON 1: Roger Ebert, as much as I respect his reviews, often misses the point of a movie. He hated Fight Club because he couldn't get past the violence (and I have never forgiven him for that), and he hated The Village because he just didn't get it. Even I have to ask, what's not to get? I had only one minor question after the movie, and I am not Einstein by any stretch of the imagination.
LESSON 2: It must be really cool to be a cult icon, to the point where people will get into fights over you in bulletin boards. I mean, these posters were saying things like "you can s**k my d**k if you don't think MNS is the greatest director ever!" Seriously, folks.
LESSON 3: Nothing could be better press for your movie than to have bloggers and posters arguing over what your film meant and whether or not it would have been worthy of Hitchcock. I can't think of another screen writer or director working today who generates the kind of excitement that Shyamalan does. People were even posting fake plot twists to The Village to try to throw others off. I mean, what fun! Who else could inspire such an interactive relationship with his films?
So back to my point. I wanted to go into the movie knowing as much as possible about it, because I knew that there would be some kind of genius at work on that wide screen, and I wanted to be ready for it, eyes wide open and gears turning.1 I was disappointed to see that the first few reviews I read were very negative. As I mentioned before, even Ebert hated the movie, and if there ever was a "Mikey" of film, someone who "liked everything," it is Roger Ebert. Then I read a few reviews by people who absolutely loved it. Some even called it Shyamalan's best movie overall. Then I read some reviews where people demanded their money back. That's when I got really excited to see this film. Only a truly brilliant, or truly boorish, movie could get this kind of response.
About midway through The Village, I decided that it was another brilliant film. As in all of Shyamalan's projects, audience members need to pay close attention to little details, things people find, words they say, clothing they wear, dates on tombstones, dialects people use, knowing glances exchanged, etc. Shyamalan gives just enough clues to alert viewers that all is not as it seems in this 19th century village.
The movie opens with a funeral, as one of The Village Elders, a select group of some eight 50-somethings who make all the rules in this isolated community, is burying his son. The tombstone dates establish that this village exists at the end of the 19th century, as the death date reads 1897. The scene then switches to the communal meal the villagers share, reminiscent of the Pilgrim's first Thanksgiving (without the Indians). But the meal is interrupted by howling in the surrounding Coventry Woods. We then find out that the villagers have any uneasy truce with "creatures" that live in those woods, and that as long as no one strays from the village into the woods, then the creatures stay out of the village. The village people are scared to death of these creatures: they keep a watch in a fire-lit tower; the braver boys play a game to see who can stand on the edge of the woods the longest; and they bury anything that is red, for this is "the bad color" that attracts the creatures. In scenes that Tom Ridge and his Homeland Security staff must have co-scripted, the villagers constantly shriek at anything red, and paint every outpost yellow, "the safe color." Fear runs rampant in this village, with the expressed purpose of keeping the younger citizenry from straying.
But eventually the village doctor runs out of medicine, and one of the Elders' oldest sons, Lucius (played brilliantly by a brooding Joaquin Phoenix, son to Sigourney Weaver's character), suggest that he be allowed to venture through the woods to get medicines from "one of the towns." Convinced that because he means no harm the creatures will leave him alone, Lucius does walk about twenty feet into the woods one afternoon, but his action has immediate consequences. A wedding is interrupted by screams, as the creatures have quietly invaded the village at night and skinned some of the livestock. Doors of the houses all have a red mark on them. The Elders, led by William Hurt's wonderfully stoic character, Edward Walker, interpret this as a warning. Thus, everyone gets another healthy scare and the young no longer desire to stray.
However, even The Elders realize the folly of this isolationism when Lucius is attacked and critically wounded by Noah, the village idiot (played by Adrian Brody). Walker is faced with either the possibility of allowing Lucius, his blind daughter Ivy's fiancée, to die of infection, or of allowing Ivy (played by scene-stealing Ron Howard's daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard), to go through the woods to get medicines. This is the point where Shyamalan gives the first real hint that something is not as it seems. Without spoiling the film, I will say that Walker takes his daughter Ivy to a secret shed, where he explains to her that the creatures, known collectively as "those who we do not speak of," are not what they have been rumored to be. Armed with this knowledge, Ivy travels through the woods with two young men (both of whom chicken out rather quickly and run on home), faces down one of the creatures, and manages to reach someone who can get the medicines she needs to save Lucius.
Without ruining the movie for those of you reading this review, I will say that The Village does indeed have a plot twist at its end, and for all practical purposes, it does work. I saw the movie with colleagues, and afterwards we discussed plot holes, such as how such an isolated village could manage to manufacture clothing (hint: pay close attention to the clothing, along with dialects, it is one of the first hints in the movie), farm tools, food, and raw materials, especially given that The Elders have all taken a vow to never stray outside of its confines. But if one is to grant that these materials could have been supplied early on in the village's creation, it is possible to account for them. One of my colleagues suggested that the movie be read as a parable, not as a realistic account of actual people taking specific actions. The film works on that level as well, as a story about fear, and how it can be used to control an entire population (not like we've ever seen that in this country).
Regardless of how one views the movie, it is difficult to not get drawn in by Shyamalan's technique. Much of the movie is shot with what seem like hand-helds, and many scenes have the quality of being made with personal video recorders. He uses overhead shots judiciously to establish atmosphere, and throws in quiet a few scare shots where we see from the vantage point of the character, and get the same surprises that he/she gets. At more than one point in the showing I attended, people screamed when something went "whoosh" and there was a quick blur through the camera's line of vision. And Shyamalan constantly sets these scenes up with music, which crescendos at just the right moment. Not only are these techniques effective, but they are fun for the audience.
There's also the same sense of magic that pervades all of Shyamalan's films. Fortunately for the audience, he has moved beyond the "magical child" phase we see in The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs, and has imbibed a young adult female, the blind Ivy, with a sixth sense. Of course, this works because it's becoming common knowledge that the visually impaired often do develop acute senses of hearing and touch, and that they key in on vocal patterns and non-vocalizations to communicate with others. Ivy has these abilities, plus she is capable of seeing a person's "color," her euphemism for lifeforce or soul. In a very clever move indeed, Shyamalan never has Ivy tell Lucius what his color is, although she refers to it repeatedly. I can just imagine how abuzz the blogs and bulletin boards will be with people debating what his color has to be.
But finally, what makes a movie worth viewing is its script and its acting. Like many of the reviewers before me, I found William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver to be wasted in much of the film, as they constantly had to underact to fit with the subtlety of Shyamalan's overall vision. In one scene where Hurt is allowed to show emotion, he is marvelous. However, the movie revolves around the love triangle between Joaquin Phoenix, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Adrian Brody, and these three actors do a fine job of creating their characters. Phoenix walks and acts like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulder, and he is literally, for he has taken it upon himself to be the village's savior. Brody has fun with the imbecilic Noah, and much of what he does seems ad libbed, which works as a great contrast for the staid actions of everyone else. Howard is simply brilliant. She makes her blindness believable, and she interacts so wonderfully with Brody and Phoenix that it seems like she actually is in love with the latter. One of the online reviewers called her the new "It Girl," and I don't think this person was far from the truth.
As for the script, all I can say is that I am the type of person who is attuned to dialogue and wording, and I have been known to be very rough on writers who write stilted or banal conversation. Shyamalan has never written anything but crisp, believable dialogue, and apparently he saw no reason to stop now. The interactions between characters in this movie work. People talk like real people (another early clue as to what might really be going on is in some of the idioms and slang people use). And no one ever goes off on a boring tangent.
Seldom do we see a writer whose name precedes both the movie title and lists of big name actors on preview posters and television ads, but Shyamalan has managed to become so famous for his writing and directing that his films are touted as "M. Night Shyamalan's Inserttitlehere." I don't think there can be a better measuring stick of a filmmaker's ability to make quality movies. I know that in the webblogs it is still debatable whether or not MNS is the new Hitchcock2, but for my hard earned theater-going money, I would say that if he isn't, he is as close as anyone is ever going to get.
1I think Shyamalan enjoys playing with his audience. In The Sixth Sense, the telling of the story through the point of view of the ghost who does not know he is dead totally fooled everyone. In Unbreakable, again he used dramatic irony, having his "superhero" character be completely unaware of his true nature, and he further fools his audience by then having Samuel L. Jackson turn out to be the arch villain whose actions create the superhero, who is in some ways his "child." What brilliance. And then in Signs, he fools all of us by basically pulling the expected plot twist out from under our feet. The aliens are really aliens! This guy is clever. What lies in store for the audience in The Village? Hell, it's worth the price of the movie just to play the game of trying to out think Shyamalan.
2Shyamalan names Hitchcock as his favorite director, and he uses some of Hitchcock's techniques, the most notable of which is always making at least a cameo appearance in each film. Watch for him near the end of The Village, in a scene where his reflection can be seen in a cabinet window.