The Village (30 July 2004)
directed by M. Night Shyamalan
starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson, Cherry Jones, Celia Weston, Frank Collison, Jayne Atkinson, Judy Greer, Fran Kranz, Michael Pitt, Jessie Eisenberg, Charlie Hofheimer
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MPAA rating: Studio: Touchstone Pictures, Blinding Edge Pictures, Scott Rudin Productions Script: M. Night Shyamalan Music: James Newton Howard Running time: 108 minutes Tags: 1890s; blindness; Drama; forests; monsters; stabbing; Thriller Tactical strength: [5/10]
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for a scene of violence and frightening situations
When I first watched writer/director M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, the ending totally surprised me. When I first saw the trailers for The Village, I told my wife my prediction of the entire story line, and I had almost every detail correct. How disappointing then to watch an entire feature-length movie with no surprises. Now a couple years later, I have watched The Village again on DVD and find that my disappointment about having figured out the plot in advance really colored my opinion of a well acted, if sloppily written, movie.
In The Village, we see daily life in a late-nineteenth-century town, but we quickly see events that don't make any sense. We see girls spot a red flower, pluck the flower from the ground, and bury it. We see young men dressed in yellow robes guarding the perimeter of the town. We soon learn that creatures inhabit the woods, and the villagers believe the color red attracts them. The town offers sacrifices to the creatures by throwing skinned animals into the woods. By tacit agreement, the creatures stay in the woods and the villagers stay out of the woods.
The main plot point: people in the village die because the doctor doesn't have any medication. Beyond the woods lie the towns. Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix), a young blacksmith, proposes to traverse the woods to the towns to purchase medicines that the town can then store in the event of medical emergencies. Major subplot, Lucius gets engaged to Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard), the blind daughter of the village leader Edward Walker (William Hurt). Edward heads the town elders who decide that Lucius's mission, while noble, carries too great a risk. Later, a mentally challenged villager (Adrien Brody) stabs Lucius several times. As Lucius lies on his death bed, Ivy makes the same proposal to travel to the towns and retrieve medicine. Without the conscent of the other elders, Ivy's father Edward allows Ivy to make the journey in spite of her blindness.
Shyamalan has assembled a stellar cast, and the actors do their best with the script's questionable motivation and silly dialogue. Hurt must make ridiculous pronouncements to the town, which he delivers with sincerity. Sigourney Weaver, as Lucius's mother, has such a small role that you would almost call her appearance a cameo. Phoenix and Howard do a decent job, but the lines would work better in the mouths of teenagers and not young adults. The script wants to create a huge epiphany in the audience as they come to a realization of the truth. I suspect that many who watch the film don't find much satisfaction with the final revelation after watching 100 minutes of red herrings. The actors do the best they can with the material given, but the conclusion just doesn't justify the tension created during the previous 100 minutes.
