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Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan; starring Joaquin Phoenix and Bryce Dallas Howard. Released to DVD on January 11, 2005.  Hollywood has often romanticized the works of the fiercely independent, lone-wolf filmmakers; the true auteurs. Though very few persons are afforded the opportunities that Robert Altman, Woody Allen and the late Stanley Kubrick have had–final cut approval and almost no studio interference during the course of production–it doesn’t stop publicists and journalists from suggesting that this is a far more normal occurrence than one would usually expect; cynical folks might argue that it is easier to sell an audience on a film that is created by an artist than one helmed by a director whom the studio has comfortably in their pocket, but I’ll let this point slide for now. Lost in the golden haze surrounding this particular version of the auteur theory is the cold reality that with no one breathing down their necks, these directors don’t necessarily have to answer to anyone. One need look no further than the works of writer/director George Lucas to find a perfect example of filmmaker whose craft has suffered mightily now that he has no one around to keep him in check; I mean, really, should anyone ever exclaim, "Yippee! I’m not a slave!" as little Jake Lloyd did in The Phantom Menace? Steven Spielberg, Wes Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, Kubrick, Altman and Allen have also suffered through similar problems in their careers, albeit on a lesser scale. The latest director to join this club and, ironically, fall on the sword of his own success is The Village’s M. Night Shyamalan. The Village is a peculiar project to be sure, and something that I hesitate to even call a movie. Minus a plot, conflict, resolution, a payoff, a twist worth waiting for, characters with whom you can empathize or any kind of discernable point, Shyamalan and his cinematographer, Roger Deakins, have created in The Village a gorgeous looking bit of nothing. Diet nothing.As The Village opens, the scenario is as follows: the year is 1897 and a small group of people (William Hurt, Sigorney Weaver, Joaquin Phoenix and Adrien Brody) is living in a tiny village surrounded by a mysterious forest that is filled with seven foot tall animals who walk on their hind legs and don’t like the color red. An uneasy truce has been called between the animals–who are ironically referred to in conversation as ‘those we don’t speak of’–and the humans; the humans stay out of the forest and avoid displa.html>spla.html>spla.html>spla.html>splaying the color red and the animals don’t embark on a nasty killing spree. Then things change. When The Village’s script leaked early in 2004, those privy to it thought it was joke, a ruse to throw journalists eager to out Shyamalan’s latest twist ending off track. Baffled by what they read in the script, these journalists attempted to make sense of Shyamalan’s script in any way they could. Before long, certain persons were insisting that Shyamalan wrote The Village as a metaphor that shined a bright light on the contradictions and fallacies of the United States’ government policies under the watch of George W. Bush. And while there may be a certain amount of validity in this line of thinking, it has absolutely no influence on the final product here. Written as a metaphor or not, The Village is a fantastically flawed piece of filmmaking.  Unlike any of Shyamalan’s other works, I can’t think of a single reason why anyone should see The Village. Deakins’ work on the lighting is sumptuous and supremely effective, but this isn’t necessarily interesting to even cinematographers. The movie is extremely slow and the dialogue stilted even for a period piece featuring near-Amish leads. I couldn’t believe how the delivery of lines like, "What is your meaning?" in place of "Huh?" effected the overall pace of The Village. It’s been a number of days since I first saw The Village and I have yet to understand Shyamalan’s logic in concocting this tale. Taken one step further, I have even less of a clue about how anyone could have ever green-lit this script. Like a sick gag, the Shyamalan-ian twist in The Village is on the audience itself; if you knew what you knew while you were exiting the theater, it’s pretty doubtful you’d have chosen to see this movie in the first place. Unlike almost any other film I’ve seen, The Village fails miserably, but at what, I’m not sure. I am simply unable to comprehend what Shyamalan was attempting to do here. And that is as bad a statement as one can make about a project.
chris neumer yes, it's true: For some reason, co-star Sigorney Weaver had nightmares for weeks after reading the script for The Village. |
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