Post-viewing wrap-up of
M. Night Shyamalan's The Village. Overall, I'm still not sure if it was more good than bad, or more bad than good. (warning: some little spoilers ahead.) Let's start with the good stuff...
PROS:
1.
Misty moors and quivering aspens. The cinematography, as always, was superb. Eerie to the extreme, simplistic and muted (v. much like the villagers themselves), and v. atmospheric and beautiful. A nice movie to just *look* at, really. Roger Deacon, you da man.
2.
Kissee-wissee, girly-stuff. Night made a romance. What a twist! The lovey-dovey business between Lucius Hunt (brood dude Joaquin Phoenix) and Ivy Walker (newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard) was actually very well done, extremely romantic, and not sick-making. These two fit well together, and have good chemistry in the scenes that they share. The only qualm I have is that Lucius didn't get enough screen time to really develop his character and this nice little sub-plot. Insofar as the assumption that this little relationship is actually a love-quadrangle, well, the hints laid for that story are too weak to really be taken very seriously (and quite frankly, it's not needed).
However, where Night succeeded with this couple, he completely flopped with what appeared to be a second hook-up (see CON #2 below).
3.
Eureka, the credits! Night took our criticism to heart after the typographic nightmare that was Signs and made some sexy type appear on screen once again, this time using the exquisite small caps from the font family Eureka (a personal fave). Spooky with alternating between negative and positive prints of the trees in the beginning and then as an accent to the end credits, falsely ageing photographs of village sites... brava. (Have no idea who made them though. Anyone know??)
4.
Haunting music. This was the best example, I think, of Night's collaboration with composer James Newton Howard. The music was absolutely perfect-pitch and the solos of violinist Hilary Hahn were exquisite (was not surprised to see her name as the first of the ending credits, she deserves all the mentions she can get).
CONS:
1.
Waste of an all-star cast. William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, and Adrian Brody, three actors generally considered to be quite talented, right? And here with nothing to do. Hurt is understandably a cold fish as a mayoral sort of figure (though he managed a modicum of emotion when his older daughter proclaimed she was in love...) not to mention the pauses at random... points in his sentences he does not pause at the beginnings and ends of sentences... (For once, I agree with Gleiberman in EW, his vocal patterns were just weird.)
Weaver is a great actress, who can do spit-fire ladies very well. Here she is treated as a highly respected member of the elders, seemingly with a certain degree of clout, and yet is tame as a bunny rabbit. You get the feeling that she could have been much more- could have forced the quasi-relationship thing with Hurt's character (see CON #2), could have revealed more of a fierce attachment to her son...
Brody gets about one line of dialogue. Maybe three at the outside, and spends the rest of the movie fidgeting and skulking around creating mischief that only he finds funny. Now, he proves that the Oscar was well-bestowed, because for a character that doesn't talk, he sure does a lot that overcomes that handicap. (However, I'm not entirely certain if people acquainted with forms of mental illness would take his performance all that well.)
2.
Edward Walker: widower or married? So, Lucius tells his mom that Walker must have a thing for her because he won't touch her. This is then displayed later at Kitty's wedding, right? So they must be struggling with all kinds of emotions and the burden of concealing them, right? And then Walker is seen in several scenes thereafter with an older woman who is not his mother, but would do as a wife in a jiffy. Therefore, was his character married? Was the woman his sister? Either way, there was zero chemistry between Hurt and Weaver and the whole sub-sub-plot, if there ever was one, completely flopped.
3.
Thematic relevance of innocence. Night has said in interviews that he wanted to make a film about innocence. Okay, fine. Whatever. And the Village is, indeed, a tiny little harbor of innocence. Yet it becomes clear that the only thing that keeps it so is a reign of terror. Fear maintains innocence. (A very biblical sort of notion, but not without the requisite grain of truth.) So is then innocence good or bad? My brother and I had a nice little debate about whether sending Ivy into the Woods is an act designed to preserve this way of life (and in so doing, praising the simplistic, innocent existence over that of the knowing squalor of the Towns) OR if it is a tiny rebellion against the innocent life (ultimately revealing that such an existence is dangerous, vile, and etc.). We couldn't come up with an answer. I still can't.
4.
Dickensian influences? I've noticed recently that Night relies on some pretty heavy-handed coincidences to make up his plots. "That's why he had asthma!" kinda stuff. So I was a little miffed when Ivy gets sent off to the Towns, and of course, can't report back of its true nature, because (ha HAH!) she's
blind!! And there were an awful lot of kids in that village, so I'm hoping that the photograph (those who have seen the film know which I mean) didn't show all of the founders of the Village. Cuz then I think there'd have to be more crazy kids like Percy running around...
5.
Missing conspiracy theories. Lucius makes a point of the fact that the town is full of secrets. Now, yes, eventually the big secret is revealed, flippity-doo-dah. However. All is idyllic, even after the creatures attack. They call one and all to come before the elders to report if they've done anything bad... but what of the elders themselves? If Walker was to be believed, the brunt of the suspicion fell on them anyway. Why all the goodwill and working in harmony together? Why not toss in some suspicious glances, minor outbursts of emotion, ANYTHING other than catatonic yes-men and women???
FINAL THOUGHTS: Okay, so it was easy to figure out the twist. Ridiculously so. But does that make it a bad movie? Well, you expect more from a Shyamalan film, this is true. And it's hard to say if the writing lacked, or if it was just the delivery of the dialogue, which was forced (but was it supposed to be, given the circumstances??) I will grant Night this: it makes you think and that's more than any crappy end of summer fare like "Anchorman" is gonna do for the movie-going public.
