Release Date: July 30, 2004
Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Written by: M. Night Shyamalan
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (a scene of violence and frightening situations)
Before The Village, M. Night Shyamalan wasn’t so much good at making movies as he was good at making movies that would be popular. His films got better as he went along, but there was something undeniably gimmicky about them: A movie about crop circles, for instance, is always going to be the kind of thing that audiences looking for a good spook will pay to see.
The Village, which is being marketed as a film about monsters in the woods, represents a big step forward for Shyamalan in this regard: It does not depend upon its selling point, its gimmick. The movie is still good for the occasional moments of hair-raising gooseflesh that most audiences will look for in a Shyamalan film, but the monsters, which are so ominously just out of reach in the theatrical trailers, turn out to be a footnote at best to the overall story.
This is not giving away anything about the movie, because most viewers will know that nothing is ever what it seems when it comes from Shyamalan. Instead, the bigger shock may be that Shyalaman, who wrote and directed this film, has opted for a very conventional drama rather than another thriller in the vein of the out-and-out ghost stories that gave him a blank checkbook in Hollywood.
It is set in an isolated village in rural Pennsylvania, sometime, according to the headstones in the town graveyard, in the late 19th century. The village, which is never named, is surrounded by a dense wood that is inhabited by a mysterious breed of creatures that seem to be almost as much imaginary as they are real -- no one knows much about them, other than that they are attracted to the color red and abhor the color yellow. Even fewer have seen them, and yet their presence is unmistakable: sounds coming from the woods at night, fleeting glimpses of red-cloaked creatures, and, lately, animals from the village’s herds mysteriously killed in broad daylight.
Much like the aliens in Signs, for most of the movie we never really get to see the creatures in the woods; Shyamalan is a master at heightening suspense by parceling out information in small increments. A figure here, a sound there. Likewise, as the viewer gets to know more about the creatures and their effect on the villagers, a bigger picture of the characters becomes clear: the village elders, a council led by Edward Walker (William Hurt), Alice Hunt (Sigourney Weaver), and August Nicholson (Brendan Gleeson), once lived in another place outside the village, which they refer to as “the towns,” but decided to move their families to this idyllic community after each had suffered some kind of tragedy. They keep the memories of these tragedies locked away in mysterious black boxes, props that end up becoming critical pieces of the puzzle, once all is revealed in the end.
At the same time that Shyamalan is peeling back the layers of his story, much like an onion, with the truth hidden at the center, a smaller and more engaging personal drama is playing out: Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard), the blind daughter of Edward, and Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix), Alice’s son, are in love with each other. But tragedy strikes, and, out of desperation, Ivy demands permission from her father to cross through the woods to go to the towns for help -- and perhaps a chance to discover what really lurks beyond the borders of the village.
The truth about the monsters in the woods is only one of a handful of secrets being kept in the movie; as one character says, “There are secrets in every corner of this village,” and it is the truth. Like all of Shyamalan’s films, not everything is clear from the start, but more than most of his other movies, there is the sense that the director is purposefully keeping pieces of information, both large and small, close to his vest: One, for instance, is the history of the village: How have these people remained alone and unaffected by the outside world for so long? Another is the role of Noah Percy (Adrien Brody), a mentally disabled young man who appears to be able to go in and out of the woods unharmed. And then there is Lucius, who, unlike the rest of the village, is utterly unafraid of the monsters but keeps mostly to himself -- does he know more than everyone else, or does he simply have a higher threshold for fear?
Some of these questions are answered at the movie’s end, and others are not, and truthfully, Shyamalan has never been great at cleaning up his own narrative messes -- though his fans will tell you these open endings, designed to spark heated discussions, are purposefully constructed, the reality is that his skills as a director have always exceed his talents as a writer.
The excellent production values in The Village are proof of this. Look at the way he shoots the village. It is a loose collection of buildings, often stuck in the middle of a perpetual fog, with the woods in all directions, a setting that by itself will generate a substantial amount of tension and fear. The villagers have constructed a line of torches at the village’s border, which makes for a great backdrop to any scene -- it is a very visual reminder of the terror, and the secrets, which lurk just out of sight in this community. Also great are the colors he has chosen to play an important role in the story: the red is a deep, robust, cherry-colored tone, which is utterly foreign to this village (in one early scene, two characters spy a red-petaled flower poking out of the weeds, and they quickly tear it out of the ground and cover it with dirt). The yellow, meanwhile, is heavy and dense, like the color of mustard, and the way that the characters use it so thoroughly as a means of protection -- they wear hooded cloaks of yellow whenever they venture near the edge of the woods -- will have the audience quickly feeling that yellow is somehow an innately safe color.
The woods, too, are great, and as anyone who has strolled through London’s Hyde Park in the middle of winter will know, the black tracery of leaveless trees against a white-gray sky makes for somber, memorable visuals (even better is that they are mixed here with the James Newton Howard score, a flowing and haunting and equally memorable violin-heavy suite). But the trees also carry a certain level of threat. When Ivy ventures into the woods, she must feel her way about with a walking stick, and after the sound of a monster nearby sends her running through the bushes, the branches whip off her face in what is one of the movie’s most terrifying sequences.
Failing his skills as a director, Shyamalan, of course, has quite a bit of help, including a corps of naturally gifted actors. Phoenix, who starred in Signs as a brooding young man, gives another such performance (and one as equally effective, though he could be criticized for essentially playing the same character) here. The always-watchable Hurt lends Edward Walker his usual world-weary touch, although, in the end, with the way the energy drains from his voice and the skin around his eyes tends to crinkle up with worry, as if he were carrying some enormous burden, he fits the part very well. And the best performance in the cast comes from Howard, the real-life daughter of the producer and director Ron Howard, who gives an exceptionally nuanced (and realistic) portrayal of a blind woman who shoulders the responsibility for an entire village.
There is greater nuance, too, in this movie, which is Shyamalan’s best so far. Like all of Shyamalan’s films, it has a sorry lack of replay value, for, knowing the end, the bulk of the movie’s suspense is mostly spoiled in a second viewing. But unlike the rest of his movies, the drama in this one is more compelling, and worth watching again. To his credit, I would not have thought Shyamalan capable of making a movie like The Village, which is very nearly conventional but still infused with the director’s distinct love of things that go bump in the night -- another movie like this and he may yet become the great filmmaker that people have always said he was.
-- Craig Roush (craigroush@hotmail.com)