M. Nightly Retrospective: 'The Village'

THE SIXTH SENSE | UNBREAKABLE | SIGNS | THE VILLAGE | LADY IN THE WATER

An isolated village is threatened by unseen outside threats while a love story between Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) is blossoming.

BOX OFFICE: $114,197,520 domestically, $256,697,520 worldwide and #300 all-time
PRODUCTION BUDGET: $60 million
M. Night Shyamalan’s cameo in The Village is as a park outpost ranger

ONE GOOD:

Made with such elegance, atmosphere and wonderfully mannered performances it will nestle deep inside your head, refusing to budge. The more you ponder it, the better it becomes. ~ Ian Nathan, “Empire”

ONE BAD:

A colossal miscalculation, a movie based on a premise that cannot support it, a premise so transparent it would be laughable were the movie not so deadly solemn. It’s a flimsy excuse for a plot, with characters who move below the one-dimensional and enter Flatland. ~ Roger Ebert, “Chicago Sun-Times”

The Village is not a good movie, which is tragic in that it has two great performances turned in from Bryce Dallas Howard in her first major feature film debut and Joaquin Phoenix. On top of that, James Newton Howard’s score is outstanding and the cinematography by Roger Deakins is some of the best you will ever see. The pictures in this portion of the retrospective prove that fact.

The problems with The Village started from the very first time the trailers hit the scene. At this point Shyamalan’s films had come to be known for their twist/revelatory endings which instantly told any logical thinking viewer that the village referenced in the trailers was probably not being terrorized by supernatural creatures. That hurt the story. What also hurt this film was the awful dialogue, primarily the dialogue William Hurt was asked to read:

What manner of spectacle has attracted your attention so splendidly? I ought to carry it in my pocket to help me teach.

That is a line Hurt reads near the beginning of the film. It comes off forced as do all of his lines. Why the majority of the 19th century jargon was his duty to regurgitate I will never know, but it never felt authentic or believable.

Bad dialogue and the fact that this would have worked simply as a love story (which is what it really is) without the faux scares would have made this a much better film. That is, unless Night had decided to go for real scares, featuring a real threat, and ditch the twist this time around. It’s a case of marketing a thriller and delivering a romance in which the thrills were unnecessary. Audiences were left cold and that spelled the demise of this film and the fact that it still made over $100 million shows audiences still believed in Night. At least we still have Howard’s score and Deakins’ pictures.

I mention Roger Deakins in my quick critique above and for those of you that aren’t familiar with his name you are probably familiar with his work. He’s been nominated for seven Oscars including two last year for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country for Old Men. I also loved his work on Jarhead and we can look forward to his work on the upcoming release Revolutionary Road later this year.

Now, enjoy all the pretty pictures…