The Village

The Village

I did my chores today. Mowed. Took the garbage to the dump. Cleaned. Did laundry. I decided to go watch a movie.

I went to see the Village.

I was a little wary. I'd read a couple of good reviews. And a couple of bad reviews. And then there was Roger Ebert, who seemed more angry in his review of the flick than anything.

(It's been brought to my attention that despite my claim in the next paragraph, I do reveal a little much in my review. Re-reading, I think the last paragraph of this post might be what the e-mailer was referring to...I don't think it spoils anything, but if someone else thought so, you might too. Read at your own risk.)

I won't spoil the movie. I will tell you that it's not the great movie a couple of reviews have made it out to be, nor is it the condescending piece of tripe that Eebs has made it out to be (I think Eebs was more put out at being asked not to reveal plot points, at having his professionality called into question).

Do you want to know what The Village reminds me most of?

Remember the documentary American Movie, about Mark Borchardt's tribulations in putting together his black and white short entitled Coven?

The Village reminds me very much of that short movie. For a couple or three reasons.

First, it's the trees. All the shots of trees. For some reason, the biggest thing I remember about Coven is the numerous shots of a forest of trees, stripped naked of their leaves by winter. You have these empty, bony finger-limbs scratching at the white backdrop of a wintery sky. And you get a lot of that in The Village. In Coven, it's used to set tone. In The Village, the forest surrounding the titular village is as big a character in the movie as any of the humans. It obscures shots when looking in at the village, it looms in the background looking out. It claws at the humans when they get near it.

The second thing that reminded me of Coven was the choppy, abrupt nature of many of the cuts. The Village tries very hard to keep the viewer off balance with these abrupt cuts. It works to an extent, but would work better if the people in the titular (I like that word) village didn't live in such a pastoral setting. It's a slower, idyllic setting. I don't think the jump cuts were as effective given the setting. It didn't leave me on the edge of my seat. After a while, it left me a little annoyed.

The third thing that made me kept thinking about Coven when I watched The Village was a little more elusive to me. Through most of the movie, I couldn't put my finger on it. And it wasn't until the end of the movie, when director Shyamalan makes his brief cameo (I hope that hasn't ruined much for anybody....) that I finally figured out what it is.

If you've seen American Movie, and as you get to know Mark Borchardt, you see that as he's put himself into debt and alienated friends and family in the course of putting together Coven, you see a guy who's hungry, who's got ideas, who's got a passion. But upon seeing the final product in conjunction with seeing the American Movie documentary, you see a guy whose hunger and dedication in putting together those ideas tend to blind him a little bit. One of the things that strikes you about Borchardt is that a few times, this bright, enthusiastic moviemaker can't see the forest for all the trees.

I watched The Village, and I thought M. Night Shyamalan's eyes maybe got a little too big for his stomach, if I can move a metaphor over. I saw a moviemaker who started out with good intentions, and a different (for this day and age, if not entirely original in the scope of Hollywood and storytelling's history) idea. But in the middle of developing this idea, the hunger got the better of Shyamalan. The underlying reasons behind Shyamalan's hunger aren't necessarily the same as Borchardt's, but the resulting problems are the same.

I'm speculating that fame may have gotten the better of M. Night. I speculate that in an attempt to make a movie that had some of the shock of the Sixth Sense or Unbreakable, as well as some of the allegory of Signs. Basically, he became a victim of his own success, and wanted to live up to his reputation. And, in doing so, he made the project a little too large. Instead of being able to paint on the canvass with a fine point brush, he had to use a roller.

In the attempt to make surprising allegory, M. Night got a little ham-handed, and didn't finish the job completely. The elements of the macrocosm are forced into the microcosm of the The Village, and aren't disguised terribly well. The movie's twist also suffers a bit for the same reasons. Shyamalan simply tried to do too much with both aspects of his story.

I say that to say this:

I don't think The Village is a bad movie. It's not a great movie. It's flawed.

I didn't feel like I wasted my money watching it. It's a little overworked, but it's not a bad flick. On the whole, I left with something of a positive feeling about the whole deal.

As for the "blatantly transparent parallels", as they've been called, there are a couple of things to be said. The Village is something of an allegory. Shyamalan tries to establish between our world and the world of The Village. I think the biggest problem with the movie is that the project is not as finely done as I would have preferred. Add to that, I think Shyamalan actually suffers a bit due to the current political environment.

I want to say this: I don't think M. Night was commenting with his story on this current political environment on the whole. Maybe he does a little. The naming is unfortunate, and if intentional, boneheaded and detrimental. Butterfly and flowers optimist that I am, I'm choosing to think he was commenting on the politics of government in general.

And I say that, to say this: I don't know that the commentary on government in The Village would go over particularly well in any time period, or under any administration. It would have its detractors in any era. But given the Us vs. Them nature of our current political environment, where you're either wit' us or agin' us, and there is no middle ground, I think The Village suffers because for it.

I would be and am curious as to how this movie will be viewed five, or ten or twenty years from now. I think the similarities between the current administration that people (Ebert) are so quick to huff and puff about being so glaringly easy to spot, will still be easy to spot. Because the names change in government, and some of the faces, but the goals of government will still be the same.

As for the rest of the movie, I think Bryce Howard turned in an excellent, excellent performance as Ivy, the blind girl around whom the movie revolves. In her quiet way, she was able to control every scene she's in.

Adrien Brody, who takes some of the most interesting roles out there, especially given the Oscar win, plays Noah, the town idiot carefully and quite well. He doesn't take a lot of the leading man roles you'd think a Best Actor might turn to. His is a minor, but pivotal role that would have been easy to take over the top and ruin. Mr. Brody should be commended.

And Joaquin Phoenix manages to appear to do more than simply read his lines.

Do I recommend that you go see The Village?

I think that if you go in with an open mind, trying not to unnecessarily be the cynical, jaded nitpicker that we all seem to have become, so that we can appear to be the smartest kid in the class, you'll get more out of the picture than you'd think. But then, I kinda think that about most things, nowadays.

Is it M. Night Shyamalan's best? No. Far from it. It's not the monster movie that you kind of infer it's going to be from the excellent trailer, and it doesn't have the excellent twists of Shyamalan's previous three ventures. But I think what he's put on now is a lot better than 3/4 of the rest of the junk that Hollywood's been putting out lately.