Shyamalan is a self-indulgent fraud. This movie bored the hell out of me.
I mostly enjoyed it but at the end I felt like a potentially great story was just wasted. If it’d actually happened in the late 1800s and had the triple-twist at the end be only a double twist (the Elders scare the village with the costumes, but instead have Ivy encounter a REAL monter instead of Adrien Brody, as was weakly foreshadowed) it would’ve been a lot better. The best twist ending they could’ve had would have been no twist at all. I predicted the ending the first time I saw the trailer, mainly because of M. Night Shyamalan being the writer.
Having the audience going in expecting the various twists (monsters not real, village really in modern times) and then pulling the rug out by having all the setup being accurate would’ve been much more effective. This would’ve also created the oppourtunity for The Towns to be something much more creative than friendly Ranger Kev.
I realize what you’re saying. And I did feel like the biggest idiot in the world for not realizing the “twist” before it was actually shown. But M. Night Shyamalan is good at misdirection. I completely forgot about the beginning. And, unfortunately, I keep watching MNS movies in hopes of getting that same moviegoing experience.
Eh, it’s never gonna happen again. I laughed at The Village throughout the movie. I still see the work of an excellent director who thinks too much of his screenwriting skills. I thought the twist was obvious. Even his use of color (Does he hate red for some reason? He used it in The Sixth Sense too) seems gimmicky to me now.
OTOH, there were still some moments that stopped me from snarking on the movie. That moment when Joaquin Phoenix grabs Bryce Dallas Howard’s hand, for example. It may be cheesy but I loved it.
I liked the cinematography, the atmosphere, the acting, the characters & even the basic story- the anti-twist & plot holes I can tolerate if I see the movie more as a parable about paralysis in a extreme pursuit of security (maybe a post-9/11 parable shrug) than a realistic narrative.
Bryce was wonderful & I also liked her “sister”.
The most disturbing part of the movie- her slapping the hell out of Noah/Adrien Brody. I got the idea that even mere hitting was totally forbidden. So for sweet gentle Ivy, who was closest to being his friend, to totally whale on him, much as he deserved it, was heartbreaking. Perhaps even moreso because he deserved it.
I’m kinda intrigued about Noah being the inadvertent serpent in their artificial Eden, all because of a mental affliction he was born with, tho he could apparently choose to do what he knew was wrong. Quite a switch from the Stephen King tendency to put mentally afflicted characters in Christ-like roles.
But with all that, I can’t argue with those who just think it sucked. It didn’t suck to me but I can totally see how it could legitimately sucked to many others.
Finally saw the film.
Good points:[ul]
[li]Roger Deakins’ photography. The man is a genius.[/li][li]James Newton Howard’s music. Simple, with lovely violin work, that adds a lot to the mood.[/li][li]Generally speaking, the acting, with Howard & Phoenix as standouts. Their conversation on the porch is quite affecting.[/li][li]The “twist” of Phoenix and the knife, particularly since he has lead billing.[/li][/ul]
Of course, the biggest problem with the film is that most of what we’ve seen is rendered as fairly absurd in retrospect of the “twist”. Most of the issues have already been addressed in this thread (from outside intruders to how people/animals/resources could’ve simply existed to support such a community), but I think the bigger failing (outside of the holes) is that there is no emotional catharsis.
I guessed The Sixth Sense’s twist fairly early, but it was still an effective film for me because HJO is very moving coming-to-terms with his “gift”, and the emotional reconnection he has with his mom in the car is quite powerful (and eclipses the “real” emotional crisis of Willis’ own coming-to-terms in the film, which left me pretty cold).
Similiarly, I like Unbreakable the best because it’s most rooted in human emotion–Willis & his wife, Willis & his son, Willis’ own self-actualization, plus what I consider the “twist”: Sam Jackson’s insanity isn’t just gratuitous, but is a peverted extreme of Willis’ journey. It is through Willis’ success that he can find his own tortured peace-of-mind about what his role in the world should be–twisted and heart-breaking all at once.
Signs doesn’t completely work because of the loose ends it leaves unresolved, but the “Aliens” are clearly McGuffins because Gibson’s own spiritual crisis and reawakening is always put front-&-center. The film sacrifices some coherency to deliver a climax that runs on all emotional cylinders (though YMMV on how effective that is for you).
But there is no real emotional catharsis in The Village. Howard’s love for Phoenix is never questioned, so her journey isn’t some sort of rite of passage. The elders, while possibly filled with some doubt or guilt, resolve to keep things the way they are, so they clearly haven’t learned anything. And MNS doesn’t indicate even the shadow of irony in such a decision, so the ending leaves us with this well-intentioned tyranny, making the genuine emotions of Hurt, Weaver, et al. seem small in the face of the enormous injustice they’re perpetuating. More than all the “holes” in the plot is the emotional hole that exists in the center of the film when it’s over. The elders are unsympathetic, the villagers are dupes, and the motivations are too reductive to be believable.
His surving the gunshot is very believable. People survive those kinds of wounds all the time. A small caliber handgun wouldn’t have shattered his spine unless the bullet hit it directly and squarely. It’s possible, sure. But it’s just as likely that bullet went through and through and the man could’ve recovered after a few hours of surgery.
And just as Bruce Willis can survive a gunshot to the gut, Joaquin Phoenix can serve a knife stuck in his stomach and again in his chest. And Bruce Willis had access to modern medicine, while Joaquin Phoenix had to wait for a blind girl to walk through a forest to get something that might possibly help him.
Saw this today. I rather liked it. Definetly the least of Shyamalan’s four major releases, but still an expertly made, entertaining film. I didn’t see the “twist” coming because it wasn’t a twist. I don’t think the audience was supposed to be surprised by the revelation that they’re in the modern world. Rather, I think Shyamalan went to some length to make sure the audience had arrived at that conclusion before the characters in the movie did. For one thing, if he wanted to surprise the audience, he probably shouldn’t have told the viewers that the monsters didn’t exsist after Ivy is attacked by one. The way he cut up the chronology for that section of the film is pretty telling. We get (if memory serves) the scene of Ivy and her dad going into the shed, then it jumps forward to her and her two guides leaving the village. Things are getting scary, but then it suddenly jumps back to the scene in the shed, and we find out that there are no monsters. Back in the forest, Ivy is deserted, and things start to get scary again. We start thinking maybe there are monsters… and then it jumps back in time (or, at least, back to the village) where Noah’s parents discover he’s escaped with a costume. Then, back to the forest where we see the monster… which is obviously Noah. Surprise is not the intent here. I’m not certain what is, just yet. Have to think about that for a while.
Incidentally, did anyone else get the impression that Noah knew what the monsters were all along? That’s why he’s always so happy when signs of their exsistence crop up: he thinks its all a big game, and he wants to play, too.
Overall, I didn’t see any really tremendous plot holes. A lot of stuff was left unexplained, such as the skinned animals, but that’s one of the things I love about Shyamalan. He doesn’t explain everything that happens in his movies. Maybe there really was a sick coyote, which happened to be stalking around their village at the same time as the other events in the movie. Maybe it was one of the elders, trying to make the monsters in the woods even scarier to try to dissuade Lucius from going to the towns. Maybe the guy who was so worried about wrinkling his shirt is a psychopath, and he’s been practicing on the livestock before moving up to William Hurts’ eldest daughter. Does it really matter? I like leaving some stuff unexplained, rather than tying everything up in a neat, self-contained package like most movies do.
Anyway, not as good as Signs (which was good, dammit!) or Unbreakable (which was fantastic, you bastards!), and nowhere near Sixth Sense (which was practically transcendent, and I’ll fight any three men in here who say different!). But I’m glad I saw it, and I look forward to seeing it again. I haven’t yet seen a Shyamalan movie that didn’t amply reward further study, and I suspect this movie might be rich in such material even by Shyamalan’s standards.
I assumed it was Noah who did the skinning. William Hurt tells Bryce Howard it was “one of the Elders” or something like that, but I think that is because he doesn’t know and can only assume it was one of the Elders acting beyond their agreed upon scope. Noah, who we now know has discovered the costume and has gone into the woods, has obviously done more than just “discovered” the secret… he has actively participated in the “game” without any supervision.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
I didn’t see the movie until about two years ago, so I had heard the ending before I saw it. I managed to sort of make myself forget it during the movie though.
Anyway, the gunshot didn’t seem that bad, so it’s reasonable to assume that he survived.
Also, even if it’s obvious to the observer, Bruce Willis’s character was surprised by the revelation. If he had learned earlier on, he wouldn’t be in the movie much because the kid is helping him find peace, like he does with all the other dead people.
As much as I liked the movie, I also would have liked if she was attacked by a real monster.
It is possible that she was attacked by a real monster, and then Noah. Remember that she got away from the monster but was found again.
That sounds like the most likely explanation, I agree. Except that Shyamalan often uses the viewers expectations against them. I don’t take anything for granted in his films. Unless something is stated as an incontrovertible fact by someone who would be in a position to know, I don’t assume anything. Signs, for example, has monsters that look like aliens, and has a lot of people talking about aliens, but there’s nothing in the movie to conclusively prove they’re aliens. It’s an assumption arrived at, by both the audience and the characters within the film, that they must be aliens because they look like what pop culture tells us aliens look like. Mel Gibson’s character says they’re aliens, but he’s in no better a position to know that than we are. (And, yes, I know that Shyamalan has said in interviews that they’re aliens. But he didn’t say it in the movie, so AFAIC, it doesn’t count.)
I’m not convinced Noah did the skinning. Would he really be smart enough (and aware enough) to dispose of the blood and fur, and then be totally caught red-handed (so to speak) after killing Lutius?
But then again, there’s that scene between William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver, who apparently are both aware that the monsters are not real, and she says something like, “The marks on the doors are too high to be from a coyote”… why would she say this if they both knew there was no coyote, because they were responsible for everything?
Or maybe Noah did do it. Or maybe… hell I’m going to bed.
The actress that I mentioned meeting said that that was her favorite shot also. (She is also the actress who played the cop in Signs.)
On Sixty Minutes last week I saw a piece about a small town somewhere out West that is populated by polygamists. The girls dress in very discreet old-fashioned clothes and are not allowed to cut their hair. They are very, very isolated from pop culture and current events. At about the age of fourteen or fifteen, they are married to someone usually two or three times their age. (They are given 15 minutes to 2 hours notice and no choice in the matter.) Escape is difficult and dangerous. When I saw film footage of the girls, they reminded me so much of the characters in The Village.
I remember that scene as being William Hurt and Bryce Howard. Maybe I’m wrong; in any case I share your confusion.
Yeah, I did get that impression. He found out somehow, and the elders either didn’t realize (because he rarely talks and is kinda incoherent when he does), or didn’t care (because he rarely talks and is kinda incoherent when he does). It did add a really bleak touch to the ending, though. “Shame your son died. But because he did, we can lie to our kids for a little while longer.”
I also wonder if maybe Ivy wasn’t sent out alone because she’s blind. She can’t see the road, or the ranger’s Jeep, or anything else suspicious, so she can’t report back to anyone else in the village. And if something happens to her and she dies, it’s “Oh, well. Monsters got her. Remember, kids; stay out of the woods!” I don’t know. I just left the movie with the impression that the elders would rather let all of their children die than let them know the truth.
And Bryce Howard should play Delirium, should they ever make a Sandman movie. She and Adrien Brody were the only two people in the movie who actually seemed to enjoy themselves.