From M. Night Shyamalan...
Writing about current movies is always a touchy subject, as it’s difficult to say much of substance without giving away information that could spoil the film for someone. This is especially the case when the filmmaker has built a reputation as someone who has a “twist” to his plots – a reputation that I suspect has been feeling like a trap to Shyamalan since shortly after The Sixth Sense established it. So, with that in mind, following the next paragraph’s innocuous comments, I’ll advise anyone who’s still interested in seeing it with fresh eyes to skip the rest of this piece. I don’t intend to lay out the plot, but I will end up mentioning details you’d rather wait for; by the end of the piece I’ll undoubtedly mention the central element upon which The Village’s existence depends.
Safe comments: The film is an improvement over the progressively goofy Signs. The actors do a solid job, and the performances are suitably understated where appropriate. The film is shot effectively, using tight shots where needed to allow a couple surprise items to appear on the screen suddenly without calling for unrealistically fast movement. The subdued visual tones of the film reinforce Shyamalan’s fascination with the power of a single element of color in a shot. Curiously, it's not the tight shots that create a feeling of restriction, even claustrophobia, but instead it's the broad shots of the village itself - rolling meadows bounded by a sudden, dense wall of forest - that accomplish it.
My best advice if you intend to go see the film while it’s in theatrical release is first to stop reading this piece now, and then to just go enjoy the movie. No one’s going to give you a prize for “figuring it out” early. No one's paying you to work at it. Just go enjoy it.
That’s all I can say without giving things away. The rest of this piece can be considered to be a minefield.
The story’s “twist” is telegraphed – all the moreso, unfortunately, because Shyamalan’s reputation has been taken up as a gauntlet by the general audience. As this film’s twist proceeds reasonably logically from realistic situations, the only ones who are going to be reaching for it and miss will be those who are betting on something supernatural. It was just that sort of reaching that made Signs - with it’s alien invasion by nearly naked aliens for whom water is terribly caustic, coming to invade a planet the majority of which is covered in water – as much a groaner in the end as it was. (I find myself harping on that because it still rankles me that Unbreakable, which required a single leap of logic on the part of the audience, didn’t break $96 million, while Signs broke past the $200 million mark to play in the same league as The Sixth Sense.)
Shyamalan enjoys playing with characters who are emotionally restrained, repressed or at least undemonstrative, and in this film he has a little more fun with it. Joaquin Phoenix’s character, Lucius Hunt, gets one of the biggest intentional laughs in the film by remaining stone-faced in the path of a torrent of over-enthusiastic emotion from another, decidedly effervescent, character. Thoughtful restraint as something being more significant – a sign of deeper feeling – is a theme that rings through some of the romantic subplots. It seems the filmmaker has taken the adage “still waters run deep” to heart as one of his core precepts, as even a casual look at central and significant characters in his previous three films tends to confirm.
This, along with the period-piece atmosphere of the village and its people, provides a sufficiently restrained background to allow William Hurt to play his usual, heavily self-restrained character without standing out in a bad way, and also allows Sigourney Weaver to play her largely supporting role without feeling any compulsion to chew the scenery so as to avoid seeming weak. Against this subdued backdrop we also have standout performances from the eccentric, Adrien Brody's Noah Percy, to the strong, and more subtly odd Ivy Walker, the nearly blind daughter (and the touch of paranormal otherwise ultimately absent from the story) played by Bryce Dallas Howard in her first starring role.
As the final pieces fell into place, and all the moreso as the end of the film arrived, I was left with something to reconcile. On the one hand, Shyamalan largely made it work, covering the bases without resorting to the paranormal or, worse, something that simply makes little to no sense. (Not that I have a problem with the paranormal, but he was overdue to step away from that for at least a single film.) This isn't to say that it all works out without a hitch, but it's satisfactory for the level of a story. On the other hand it left me with a sour estimation of the elder characters. Solid, final spoiler: Hurt’s character has vast wealth to draw on, yet he and his fellow elders decided to leave behind the good – such as medicine – with all of the bad of the outside world. To call this irresponsible, especially as they brought and raised their children under these conditions, would be too charitable.
Safe comments: The film is an improvement over the progressively goofy Signs. The actors do a solid job, and the performances are suitably understated where appropriate. The film is shot effectively, using tight shots where needed to allow a couple surprise items to appear on the screen suddenly without calling for unrealistically fast movement. The subdued visual tones of the film reinforce Shyamalan’s fascination with the power of a single element of color in a shot. Curiously, it's not the tight shots that create a feeling of restriction, even claustrophobia, but instead it's the broad shots of the village itself - rolling meadows bounded by a sudden, dense wall of forest - that accomplish it.
My best advice if you intend to go see the film while it’s in theatrical release is first to stop reading this piece now, and then to just go enjoy the movie. No one’s going to give you a prize for “figuring it out” early. No one's paying you to work at it. Just go enjoy it.
That’s all I can say without giving things away. The rest of this piece can be considered to be a minefield.
The story’s “twist” is telegraphed – all the moreso, unfortunately, because Shyamalan’s reputation has been taken up as a gauntlet by the general audience. As this film’s twist proceeds reasonably logically from realistic situations, the only ones who are going to be reaching for it and miss will be those who are betting on something supernatural. It was just that sort of reaching that made Signs - with it’s alien invasion by nearly naked aliens for whom water is terribly caustic, coming to invade a planet the majority of which is covered in water – as much a groaner in the end as it was. (I find myself harping on that because it still rankles me that Unbreakable, which required a single leap of logic on the part of the audience, didn’t break $96 million, while Signs broke past the $200 million mark to play in the same league as The Sixth Sense.)
Shyamalan enjoys playing with characters who are emotionally restrained, repressed or at least undemonstrative, and in this film he has a little more fun with it. Joaquin Phoenix’s character, Lucius Hunt, gets one of the biggest intentional laughs in the film by remaining stone-faced in the path of a torrent of over-enthusiastic emotion from another, decidedly effervescent, character. Thoughtful restraint as something being more significant – a sign of deeper feeling – is a theme that rings through some of the romantic subplots. It seems the filmmaker has taken the adage “still waters run deep” to heart as one of his core precepts, as even a casual look at central and significant characters in his previous three films tends to confirm.
This, along with the period-piece atmosphere of the village and its people, provides a sufficiently restrained background to allow William Hurt to play his usual, heavily self-restrained character without standing out in a bad way, and also allows Sigourney Weaver to play her largely supporting role without feeling any compulsion to chew the scenery so as to avoid seeming weak. Against this subdued backdrop we also have standout performances from the eccentric, Adrien Brody's Noah Percy, to the strong, and more subtly odd Ivy Walker, the nearly blind daughter (and the touch of paranormal otherwise ultimately absent from the story) played by Bryce Dallas Howard in her first starring role.
As the final pieces fell into place, and all the moreso as the end of the film arrived, I was left with something to reconcile. On the one hand, Shyamalan largely made it work, covering the bases without resorting to the paranormal or, worse, something that simply makes little to no sense. (Not that I have a problem with the paranormal, but he was overdue to step away from that for at least a single film.) This isn't to say that it all works out without a hitch, but it's satisfactory for the level of a story. On the other hand it left me with a sour estimation of the elder characters. Solid, final spoiler: Hurt’s character has vast wealth to draw on, yet he and his fellow elders decided to leave behind the good – such as medicine – with all of the bad of the outside world. To call this irresponsible, especially as they brought and raised their children under these conditions, would be too charitable.
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