“Greetings, adventurers, I am Selkie?” *That * Selkie?
These selkies were what I had in mind. What is this Selkie you speak of? Color me curious.
Oh, right those. I’ve read about them.
The line I quoted is from Baldur’s Gate. A Selkie says that to you, hires you, and wants you to kill some people whom she owes money to. Real bitch…but even as I offed her I was thinking, “hey, pretty clever”.
I think that’s how she spelled it, so it caught my eye.
Will someone spoil the ending for me? What was the big payoff?
Number six finds out who is number one.
:smack:
My main thought after seeing the movie was “You know, for creatures that they ‘don’t speak of,’ they certainly do a lot of speaking of them.”
I could’ve sworn I saw a commercial for The Village that spoiled the ending on TV. The DVD didn’t have any of the trailers, so I wasn’t able to confirm it, but
I could swear I saw a car in the background of one of the shots. So I thought maybe it was supposed to take place in some bizarre post-apocalyptic future where everybody dresses and talks like early colonists, but it’s really the future or something. That had to be the premise, because after all, they wouldn’t spoil the movie in a commercial, would they?
I don’t know what that was all about. Maybe it was just my imagination. But I knew the ending from the moment the movie started.
Personally, I thought the movie was okay. Not great, but not a terrible movie. I had heard lots of people say it was a bad movie by the time I saw it, so I didn’t have very high expectations. I think the key is to not expect it to be anything like The Sixth Sense (I haven’t seen any of his other movies) and to realize that it’s not supposed to be a horror movie. Or maybe it’s the fact that I knew the ending right off the bat, so I didn’t have the Big Shocking Twist to look forward to, and I could concentrate more on the story rather than looking for clues.
I was going to start a thread to ask this very question, but saw one already existed. Given my cutting-edge movie viewing habits (just saw the movie), I am forced to resurrect a thread and ask a question months after anyone’s probably interested in answering. Sorry…if the thread sinks without getting a response, serves me right…
Anyway…[spoiler]…William Hurt had already let his daughter in on the big secret, he had no idea that Noah would come after her after she left, and he sent her off without asking the other elders, so your rationale doesn’t make sense to me. Again, why didn’t William Hurt just go himself? He could have told a blood-curdling tale after he came back, despite it being merely a leisurely and pleasant stroll through the woods (as far as he knew it would be). The elders’ vow not to leave seemed no less important than their need to keep all the others there. Once he decided to let someone go (his daughter, no less), why not just go himself?
And another thing: I just didn’t get the reaction of the game warden guy who helped Ivy after she scaled the wall out of the preserve. Was he in on the secret? If not, his reaction made no sense. Why in the world would he help a strange chick with an odd request, then get a ladder for her to get back in an area that he was supposed to keep people out of? And this after about two minutes of odd conversation. Wouldn’t the proper response have been, “WTF are you talking about, sister? What the hell were you doing in there? Don’t move. I’m calling my boss.”
If he was in on the secret, then his interaction with his boss makes no sense. Why would he know and his boss not know? Why not just tell his boss, if they both knew (“One of 'em got out, boss.”)? Why sneak the medicine out and make up a story about why he needed a ladder?
And last but not least, since his daughter was let in on the secret (and her dad didn’t know that Noah would hunt her, dressed as a beastie), wasn’t he basically starting the wheels in motion for everything to become unraveled? IOW, Ivy knows, then Lucius knows, then soon everybody knows. One more reason to ask, why not just go himself?[/spoiler]I did enjoy the movie, mostly, but thought the director needed to do a little better on these points. He probably could have done something that wouldn’t have resulted in me saying to my wife, “Hey, that doesn’t make sense!”
I’ve said it before around here and I’ll say it again: He’s an extremely gifted director, possibly the very best who’s working in main stream Hollydumb today.
To bad his storytelling doesn’t match that gift. I wish the studio would make him team up with a gifted screenwriter.
I have been surprised to hear that so many people were disappointed by the film once they worked out the twist. I think I’m part of a very small minority who figured out the twist early on and still enjoyed it. For me it was interesting to try and work out how the twist would be foreshadowed in the plot. An example would be
When William Hurt took his daughter to the forbidden shed I was expecting to to contain a car or some other modern device. It didn’t, it contained a costume which could have been made using the tools and materials they had available.
This of course did not give any evidence to my suspicions about the twist. In this respect I thought Shyalaman was a step ahead of everyone and worked to make the movie enjoyable whether or not you had figured it out.
I thought it the most excruciatingly-paced movie of 2004. Very few films have physically irritated me to the extent that The Village did. Near the end I was yelling “Enough! End already!”
And… it didn’t help that I had a splitting headache either.
I like Shyalaman, perhaps I oughtta give this one another chance. But I couldn’t have just imagined how boring this film was, could I?
As I recall, Airplanes couldn’t fly over the village. I assume that with this rule and others associated with it, and along with it, the guard that helpped Ivy figured it all out as soon as he saw her. As to why Ivy went and no one else, First a lot of people in other threads, and I assume in this thread already mentioned that a blind person could go, and have a harder time getting beleived. -She was already let in on parts of the secret… why tell someone else? While being found was always a possibility… I guess it was assumed it wouldnt happen. OR He (Hurt) couldn’t stand to admit that the entire idea failed. -As I recall, Ivy and her Boy friend were close to figuring it out anyway… This was my first Shamylan movie I saw… but I was clued in to expect a twist. I guessed more or less the ending… and well didnt have fun with it.
There are no movie theaters in Saudi Arabia, so I miss a lot of movies. I just read all the spoilers. No biggie. Just like ‘I See Dead People’ (or whatever) the twist is so obvious it hardly counts at all.
If he knew about the secret, why all the sneaking around with his boss?
No, don’t tell someone else–just go yourself, if you’re her dad and already resigned that someone should go. That’s the main non sequitur for me. If William Hurt goes, he needn’t let his daughter in on the secret, he doesn’t have to trust that his daughters entourage will stay behind at the start of the secret road, he doesn’t have to wonder if his blind daughter will be hurt or discover the BIGGER secret–in fact, it makes no sense that he doesn’t just go himself, other than the fact that the movie would have been done about a half hour earlier.
IMO, that’s the answer–it just doesn’t make sense. But I resurrected the thread on the chance that I just missed something and there was a plot point that would have explained why he didn’t just go himself. But I don’t think so.
All I want to know is why nobody made Halloween costumes that looked like Those of Whom We Do Not Speak. I thought the creature costume was awesome.
I agree, the costume was way cool. When the creature came into the village and you first saw him–wow!
BTW, I figured out how they could have fixed these plot problems…[spoiler]Make William Hurt a cripple. He simply can’t make the journey, so he sends his daughter before the elders can find out and stop her. Even with her blindness, she has a better chance of making it than he. And his physical limitations are a metaphor for the stunted psyche that leads to such an isolationist “utopia,” one that ultimately fails when violence still finds them (eh? not bad).
Then, he could just NOT tell his daughter about the creatures’ being fake (and reveal the secret to us some other way–say, during the heated conversation with the elders when he tells them he let Ivy go). She runs off, still believing.
Or, tell her, but in this context,“We elders won’t live forever, and we knew that one day we’d have to reveal this secret to a select few who could carry it on. Even though this isn’t the time or situation where I intended to tell you…” So, the later scene where Noah attacks her is still scary (leave in the voice over where we’re reminded that history books mentioned these creatures), and it still makes sense when she dumps him in the pit and he is revealed.
Then, make the warden guy who finds her the boss, and he says something that makes it seem he knows the secret (“You live in there? Then that means you’re one of the…[voice trails off, leaving his suspicion unspoken]”). Maybe his name is on his jacket–Walker, it reads (that was Hurt’s name, right?). The guy back in the station is his underling, who is obviously not in the know. The dialogue and activity then reflect the fact that the boss is trying to sneak out without attracting the ignorant flunky’s attention.[/spoiler]
See? All M. Night needed to do was hire me as a script doctor, and everything would have been OK. 
I think William Hurt’s character didn’t go because he had vowed that he was done with modern society (along with the rest of the elders). It was a personal (and selfish) reason, but the elders are very selfish.
Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I just saw the movie and I must comment.
[spoiler]Forget the no-fly thing. There are more serious incredulous parts to the movie.
Firstly, that town couldn’t have been that big. I’m sure they had farms and all that, but eventually you have to go “outside” to replenish consumables. Are we supposed to believe they were totally self-sufficient? That they grew all their food, wool, cotton, plants for dyes (but no red dyes!), and that they were working looms, foraging their tools, and making their own paper? Where did these 20th Centurians learn how to be so resourceful?
Secondly, even on wildlife reserves you’d expect visitors to stumble across the area. People are still allowed on reserves, and even if they aren’t–surely rangers and wildlife officers would have the area canvassed SOMETIME. I just find it hard to believe that they could be that isolated.
Thirdly, and most troubling, was the population size of the town. It wasn’t a bustling metropolis, but there were a bunch of folks there. A bunch. Were they (excluding the elders) all born in Conventry? Obviously not, since Phoenix’s father’s murder is what drove his mother to the counseling center. Further, what would be the chance that all the people seeking help at the center would be childless or parents of infants? Very slim, in my estimation. Surely some of those kids would have been born outside of Conventry and would have possessed firm memories of that previous life. At the very least, they would have been present for the building of the society and known an existence where the monsters did not exist.
[/spoiler]
The ending took me by surprise, I admit, but the anacronisms stuck out to me from the beginning.
[spoiler]The houses, especially the house where the blind girl lived, were not colonial in nature. It was like watching an Ethan Allan commercial. (Real colonists wouldn’t bother lighting up so brightly at night, either).
The language was “old timey”, yes, but not consistent with how English immigrants of colonial times sounded. And Sigourney Weaver did not speak in such a heavy manner as the others.
There was a lot of dancing, playing, and joking around that you would not associate with early colonial life. I’m sure many colonies were not Puritanical in nature, but they still wouldn’t have been so carefree and fancy-free.
Most obviously, the women shared equal footing with the men. And religion was practically non-existant. (I knew something was “off” when Giddy was giving marriage proposals and no one raised an eyebrow.)
There were way too many children for a nascent society of harsh living.
[/spoiler]
I liked Signs. It required a lot of suspension of belief, but I could do it without straining too hard. Plus, the movie wasn’t really a sci-fi movie. Fine. But The Village requires too much from the audience. I don’t hate it, but I won’t recommend it to anyone.
Monstro: Just fyi, the town wasn’t supposed to be of the colonial era. IIRC, the grave marker at the begining said 1904 (or some date in the early 1900s). Otherwise, I had the same thoughts about the overall plot, especially those in your first spoiler box.
I just saw the movie last night, and really enjoyed it.
As for the anachronisms, stiff dialogue, Color-of-Danger/Color-of-Protection, etc, I saw all that as emphasising the allegorical and fanciful nature of the movie. I rather like movies (The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou springs to mind as an example) that eschew realism and wear their artifice on their sleeves. It only very briefly occured to me that the villiage was a historical pre-modern American settlement, or might be intended to appear to be one. Certainly no American settlement ever had their customs or superstitons, much less actual semi-humanoid monsters lurking in the woods. Instead, I took it to be a fanciful setting. Indeed, the brightly hued cloaks simply screamed fairytale to me. (Only this time, the wolf wears red?)
Given Shyamalan’s penchant for twist endings, I almost immediately guessed that the twist would be related to genre. Instead of watching a fairytale or a fantasy, we were watching something else. I waited until the end to discover whether Ivy would stumble into an alien landscape (possibly with hyperspace transport available), revealing the settlers to be space colonists, or more likely especially as the hints accumulated, into modern society.
As for Hurt not going? That would have repudiated his vow, which was the emotional/spiritual foundation on which all the elders depended. (One woman called it “sacred.” He had promised never to return, no matter what, and if he was unable to create a communitee he was willing to stay with no matter what and suffer the concequences, his experiment had automatically failed in the eyes of the elders and of himself. The elders themselves were beginning to doubt, and they needed reasurance that the vow still held; that it was still worth it. Ivy had never made such a promise, and couldn’t be bound by it. The elders recognized in her the same hope for something better, for a way to escape heartache (or at least rage against it) even if it meant leaving all you’d ever known. They knew that if the community were to survive, it would be because of the hope and courage of people like Ivy. They also know that she could validate their existance whatever happened. If she never returned, it was further evidence of the cruelty (both real and invented) that exsted beyond the boundary. If she returned it was proof that the community was worth returning to, that the community was a success and would have at least one leader to carry on as elder.
As for the end, when Ivy crosses the boundary, the man who found her couldn’t have known about the village, because that would destroy the irony that the village is able to survive, and Ivy is able to return with medicine, only because people outside aren’t cruel and violent, but respond to a seemingly helpless innocent stranger with kindness and pity, even at risk to themselves. And I’m not sure that’s beyond belief. (Unlikely, yes, but no more than anything else in movies.) Ivy is beautiful and striking. She is possesed of an almost mystical ability to connect with people, symbolized by her ability to see certain people’s “color” and to communicate with the two least communicative people in town, Noah and Lucius. The guard is stricken by her beauty and compelling power and by her helplessness and innocence. (And by the nobleness of her quest–True Love–and also the possability of getting back at Humperdink. Oh wait, wrong movie.) Heaven knows, if I ran into Bryce Dallas Howard, I’d feel a desire to do whatever she tells me do!
One thing that bothered me is the whole idea that nothing in their existence is red. So they never eat tomatos, cherries, apples, peppers, rhubarb, radishes, turnips, raspberries, etc? Sorry, I ain’t buying that. These are foods that every Pennsylvanian has in their gardens, and it just seems beyond belief that they could banish this color from their lives.
But then, M. Night has a thing about red - it was a big part of The Sixth Sense.