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January 08, 2005

Stay Away From The Village

The Village is officially released on DVD Tuesday, but your video store might be renting now (as mine is).

It's hard to review this movie for those who haven't seen it, as it relies, as M. Night Shayamalan's past efforts have, upon a big surprise ending.

So I can't say much without spoiling the big mystery. Except:

Don't bother. Wait for HBO. When you're very bored and have absolutely nothing at all better to do, read, or watch.

I've tried to avoid actual spoilers below, but it's hard to completely avoid implying certain things. That said, if you want to read why you should stay away from this movie in more detail, read on past the jump.

From the first moments of the film I realized that it was so ham-handedly allegorical that I was watching, basically, an updated Twillight Zone, in living color. And from there you just have to puzzle things out-- there are, after all, only so many surprise endings possible. I mean, what are the options?

1) It's all a dream.

2) It's all taking place inside the mind of a schizophrenic in a lunatic asylum.

3) They're all really dead, and this is really hell.

4) Okay, he's not quite dead yet, but he's in the moment of death/in a coma, and this is all going on inside his head.

5) This isn't really earth, it's an alien zoo.

6) That's not necessarily mayonnaise!

Etc. Obviously, some can't apply, some won't work, and you just have to work down the list of suprise endings you've seen a hundred times until you find the one that fits the plot-pattern.

I nailed the big Suprise Ending within ten minutes. I had to work out the details on some of the rest of it, but by the thirty minute mark, I had it all figured out. All of it.

Figuring out a tricksy puzzle-movie can be enjoyable... as long as there's enough cool stuff to keep you interested even after the tricksiness has all been figured out. The Sixth Sense was like that; so was the original Planet of the Apes.

This movie isn't like that. Once you've figured things out, or seen the movie, you'll never have any desire to see it again. The only interesting thing in this movie is the tricksiness, and that's only mildly interesting.

When I figured it out, I thought That can't be right, because I didn't see how it was possible to pad that premise out into a full feature. As a half-hour Twillight Zone or Night Gallery, sure. But a two-hour feature? That would take too much padding, I thought.

But padding there was.

Further, none of it makes a lick of sense. Suffice to say that there is a way out of The Village, and that the Elders know of this way, and it just makes no sense at all that they've let children die or go blind from easily cured maladies -- easily cured, were they to get the necessary "medicines" from the "towns" beyond the "forbidden border" -- when the Elders, knowing of this special way to get through the dangerous woods, could arrange a trip at least once a year to make sure they have enough supplies that no child dies of a simple fever again.

Puzzle-movies are fun, but they often are just a purely intellectual exercise in problem-solving-- first from the screenwriter's POV, as he's writing it, and then from the viewer's, as he's watching it. There's a certain cheapness in the trick-ending, I think-- it's a bit of crutch, and having a Big Trick Ending makes a script easier to write, since it sort of forces you to put certain scenes in here and there. The Big Trick Ending essentially supplies a roadmap to the writer; he then just has to link A to B to C to D.

Shayamalan has been relying on this crutch for too long, trying to recapture his undeniable success with The Sixth Sense. It's time he grew into a more mature and interesting filmmaker, and abandoned the Big Trick Ending in favor of a normal sort of movie in which the emphasis is on character, event, and story.

There's much to appreciate about Shyamalan's laconic and confident style, but he does tend to try the viewer's patience. There's a fine line between taking your time and letting events unfold at a leisurely place and just plain boring an audience.

His directing isn't much better when it comes to his actors. William Hurt's kind of a wooden actor, right? Well, he's wooden here, as is most of the rest of the cast. But Shayamalan actually coaches the normally-effusive Joachim Phoenix to actually play more wooden and morose than Hurt. When a woman demands Phoenix open up and talk and share his emotions, for once in my life I took the woman's side, almost screaming, "Show something, for crying out loud, you big lump of inert clay!"

Scary? No. Silly? Frequently. The dialogue sometimes borders on the chuckle-worthy-- yeah, you know the effect he's after, but he's not quite achieving it, and the distance between his intent and his ability sometimes provokes a wry smile.

BTW-- if you were going to send someone on a dangerous trek through monster-haunted woods, who would you send? Well, if you were William Hurt, you wouldn't go yourself; you'd apparently send your blind daughter, and then explain this LUDICROUS and utterly cowardly decision by saying something absurd like "Love will guide her."

Monsters or no monsters, a blind girl is not really the sort of person you send through a woods with no map and no trails. And yet, there you go. For no plausible reason at all, we've got a blind girl feeling her way through entirely-unknown forest hoping to somehow stumble across a safe harbor along the way.

Why send the girl? Because the plot points dictated by his Big Trick Ending demanded it. And so logic and common sense had to be subordinated to the imperatives of the Big Trick Ending.

Second Thoughts: I wasn't quite fair about the "padding" or the claim that there's nothing here of interest, except for the tricky plot. The movie is "padded," if you will, with a couple of romances and/or romantic triangle, and these are almost interesting enough to make you nearly forget that practically nothing at all is happening for an hour or so.

Bigger Spoiler: If you really want a hint as to which kind of surprise this movie ends with, highlight the following text (printed in white font):

Think "reverse Scooby-Doo."

Yeahp, Scooby-Doo. Shayamalan avoids some of the most hackneyed twists -- they're all dead and this is hell, etc. -- only to choose what must be the most cliched twist of all -- the ol' Scooby-Doo special -- used in every single one the three hundred Scooby-Doo cartoons.

The only thing missing was the "Old Man Wiggums!" after the unmasking and some grumbling about "meddling blind girls."

posted by Ace at 01:51 AM

Comments

Even worse, I saw the trailer when it was first dropped, and said, nah, that can't possibly be the twist, too easy.

Of course, that was the twist, and damn, was that a letdown. I was hoping for something...worth my time and money. I got neither.

Posted by: Geoff on January 8, 2005 04:11 AM

You have to check out Mary's parody:
http://www.whataretheysaying.org/archives/001294.html

Posted by: Yehudit on January 8, 2005 04:24 AM

I found it pretty insulting, really. If you want to advance the moonbat message, just be up front about it, don't disguise it as a horror movie/thriller to lure me in.

Posted by: dave on January 8, 2005 08:52 AM

I'm almost embarassed to admit I enjoyed it. The plot was pretty easy to figure out, but most movies are. I did enjoy the camera work (especially the treehouse scene) and some of the sub-plots were kind of entertaining. The scene where the blind girl's sister pledges her undying love to Phoenix and his reaction is to have no reaction at all was hilarious. The next scene of her despondent was funny too.

Then again, I only paid $4 to see it. That's usually how I set my standard. If I pay $10 it'd better be the best movie ever. For $4 it can just be a way to kill a couple of hours.

Posted by: michael dennis on January 8, 2005 10:59 AM

The twist ending for his next movie should be the lack of a twist.

If I want a good puzzle movie, I'll watch "Memento" again.

Posted by: Joe R. the Unabrewer on January 8, 2005 11:03 AM

Way OT! Ace- please turn up the heat on "ole sanctamonious" one- Ollie Willis. He is pounding the White House on this Armstrong Williams thing. Unfortunately, it was extremely dumb what some knucklehead in the Ed Dept did. Ollie is on this "currupt admin "gig again. Seems he forgets all about the Clinton's nonsense

Posted by: kevin on January 8, 2005 11:08 AM

Ebert gave the movie a good savaging recently, too. His ending zinger:

Eventually the secret of Those, etc., is revealed. To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore.

And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the beginning, and can get up from our seats and walk backward out of the theater and go down the up escalator and watch the money spring from the cash register into our pockets.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040719/REVIEWS/40719002/1023

Another tidbit about Ebert: he can be a PC liberal doofus sometimes, but he can also be a very good writer about movies. It was a little refreshing to see him calling out Hollywood's stereotypical one-dimensional treatment of religious characters in his review of "Virgin":

Movies can't seem to deal with faith as a positive element in an admirable life, and the only religions taken seriously by Hollywood are the kinds promoted in stores that also sell incense and tarot decks. So it's refreshing to see the Robin Wright Penn character allowed to unbend in "Virgin," to become less rigid and more of an empathetic mother, who intuitively senses that although Jessie may be deluded, she is sincere.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050106/REVIEWS/501060302/1023

Posted by: on January 8, 2005 12:20 PM

Geez Ace, get to the movies much?

What's next, a review of Schindler's List?

(Just kidding!)

Good review. I had the film spoiled by an Ain't It Cool News script review, which actually had a different, ironic ending.

SPOILER AHEAD

Blind girl steps out of the woods, only to be hit by a truck. Black guy gets out, looks at her on the ground, and says "Stupid [effing] white people."

SPOILER OVER

Man, that would've been a GREAT ending.

Anyways, since I knew what the movie was all about beforehand, there was no pressure for me in the film, waiting for the trick ending. I watched it just as a movie. . . and it's still a failure, albeit a classy one. M. Night Shamalamadingdong makes very pretty pictures, and his movies are always at the very least *interesting* to look at. But if the film ain't going anywhere worth going, then you're right, borrrrrrrring.

Anyways, I've loved his other movies (especially Unbreakable), so I'm hoping he finds a way out of this funk for his next movie. I think he needed a good failure to "clear the air," and get him (and his demanding audience) off of the trick ending kick.

Cheers,
Dave

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on January 8, 2005 12:53 PM

Well, the funny thing is, um, once you realize the film is set in the modern era and not the 1890's or whatever, you have to ask: were they escaping modernity and violence, or just Hispanics and blacks?

Because, you know, they've created themselves a little white paradise.

Posted by: ace on January 8, 2005 01:44 PM

M Night is a hack and a fraud. He sucks. Just like his movies.

Posted by: sonofnixon on January 8, 2005 03:02 PM

And he would have gotten away with it too, if not for you meddling bliggers!

Posted by: TallDave on January 8, 2005 03:22 PM

It's even worse when you realize it's just a reverse clone of Roger Corman's 'I Was a Teenage Caveman' starring a young Robert Vaughn who was apparently born looking Forty-ish and his hair perfectly parted.

When you steal plot twists from Roger Corman you've hit bottom, noticed the shovel lying conveniently close by and started digging.

Posted by: Eric Pobirs on January 8, 2005 04:56 PM

Here's where you go wrong. You base whether or not the movie has merit on how difficult it is to figure out the ending. You must really hate WW2 movies, then.

There is a lot more in the Village, but obviously that is in the eye of the beholder. I saw it as a critique of utopia and the socialist ideal, and the fact that no amount of social engineering can prevent monsters in some form from finding their way into the society, and there is no remedy for the monsters other than courage.

Posted by: ArrMatey on January 8, 2005 06:21 PM

Here's where you go wrong. You base whether or not the movie has merit on how difficult it is to figure out the ending.

No. I figured out most of the Sixth Sense, too. Still loved it. Still do.

The question isn'tjust how easy it is to figure things out. It's whether the actual plot makes sense and is satsifying. And whether or not there's compelling-enough stuff going on to sustain interest even once you know the Big Reveal.

Posted by: ace on January 8, 2005 07:08 PM

It's not entirely uncommon to have the same director get on both the Best and Worst Movies of all Time List, but Sham-me-lan is the master. "Sixth Sense" was wonderful but all of his other movies have truly stunk (sorry, Dave, Hubs and I were laughing and saying the lines before they were said during "Unbreakable").

His worst, IMO, has got to be "Signs" because it had the most promise than the others (not to mention Mel Gibson). Some moral in that movie; "If your wife dies in a horrific car wreck, make sure you listen to her final words, because some day those words can save you from an alien invasion and restore your faith in God." W-o-w. How can an experienced director decide to even make such a movie?

I'm with you, Ace, this director needs to find a new way to end his movies without digging so hard for a surprise.

Later,
bbeck

Posted by: bbeck on January 9, 2005 02:03 AM

I think I'll wait for the done-in-thirty-seconds-by-bunnies version.

Posted by: Pixy Misa on January 10, 2005 02:33 AM

The Village was weak, but I liked his other movies. It gets annoyting to watch his movies with some people though"I guessed it in 10 minutes, no I got it in 5, no i guessed it at the trailer, no the title gave it all away" etc, unfortunately for Shymylan, the positives in his movies will always be overlooked by tryint to get the ending

Posted by: on January 10, 2005 11:05 AM