The Village (2004) (1 Viewer)

[Andres Munoz]

I didn't want anything spoiled for this movie so I stayed away from reviews, discussions, etc.

The only notion that I had I gotten from the trailers so I went really expecting to see monsters. How wrong was that expectation?

But I have to say I liked the movie and the more I think about it, the more I like it. The whole thing just clicked for me.

Like it was said before, very good performances by Howard, Hurt and Phoenix.

One question though. I got a little distracted during the big reveal at the end. The scenes where the newspaper clips are shown, the Shymalan speech, and basically when the existance of the village is explained. I had a mental block during this whole thing. So what happened there? I remember seeing all the "elders" in a picture outside of a "counseling center". Was this a center for violence victims? They all decided to get away from society and start their own? I'm assuming the William Hurt character is the one that financed the whole thing since his father had so much money. But one thing that puzzles me is that there were about 8 elders but a lot of young people. Where did they all come from? They can't all be descendants of the elders can they? What was your take on this?

 

[Carlo_M]

Andres, you pretty much hit the nail on the head re: the elders.

WRT to the kids, maybe there were more people they recruited to go into the village than just the 10 or so that were outside of the counseling center. Don't know, it's never fully explained. But yeah, there's way too many people for just those 10 to have created from their loins

And Patrick, we could go back and forth on this whole blindness thing...but I'm not gonna. I'm sorry it spoiled the movie for you. It didn't for me. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

[Malcolm R]

And fortunately for you, it didn't ruin the film for you. But it did for a lot of the audience that doesn't appreciate being fooled.

As someone else said earlier, I hate false advertising.

 

[todd s]

William Hurt's character mentions that it is a 1/2 days travel(by foot) to the "outside". So if anyone is going to wander in. You would assume they wouldn't travel that far in.

 

[Vlad D]

I liked this movie a lot. I would rank it as my second favorite MNS film after The Sixth Sense.

The issue with Ivy's blindness didn't bother me at all. I just assumed she wasn't 100% blind since she mentioned, several times, that could see auras.

Like others in this thread, I also figured out both "twists" early on in the movie. Not that anything in the movie gave it away; probably just me trying to figure it out before MNS revealed it.

My favorite scene in the movie was the one with Ivy holding her hand out for Lucius. That whole scene totally moved me, and the music was just perfect.

My other favorite scene was the porch scene with Ivy and Lucius. Also perfect.

The more I think about this movie the movie I like it. I'll definitely have to see it again and see how it holds up upon second viewing.

 

[Joe RZ]

Why do people allow themselves to find out to much information about a movie like this?

With this director you knew something was up.I only saw the trailer.I stayed away from anything that was being said about it before seeing it.

I enjoyed it.When Brody stabbed Joaquin there was a huge gasp in the theater.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

I'll start out by saying i really didn't like this film at all. it was slow, painfully slow, the majority of the characters were underdeveloped and obtuse, so I felt like i was watching a slowly stage production of "Our Town" that was advertised as a scary movie. There was little tension, no suspense, mediocre characters and drab scenery.

However- i think it's impossible to discuss this film without some elements of politics. I think it wasn't slightly masked as some reviews have suggested, the symbolic messages were SCREAMING from the screen, IMHO. I would go so far as to say that these messages were the ENTIRE point MNS was trying to express, not a sly subtle element of the storytelling.

The self-imposed isolationism of "the village" inside the large global world, a small board of well meaning elders who manufature fear to control and maintain their way of life within the villiage and make the citizens fear the world surrounding them. I think MNS was making very very clear political satire of HIS VIEW on American society-- not a thinly disguised subtext thing- it was very much on the surface and very much the point, IMHO, of why he made this film.

It's about a half step shy of giving the characters anagram names to represent major political figures... but at this point even that would be even less surprising than the "twist" ending of this film.

-V

 

[Matt Stone]

Indeed. I think the tombstone had a death date of 1897.

 

[ameri_fan]

the movie was really good i thought. it had a great storyline, even though i went into the theather expecting a thriller more than a love/family storyline

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Vince Maskeeper wrote (post #127):


Haven't seen the movie. How do they explain overhead airline noise and, indeed, overflying planes? It's kinda hard not to hear and see them, even in the "boondocks", I should think.

 

[Malcolm R]

Haven't read the thread, either.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Malcolm R wrote (post #131):


Sounds thoroughly farfetched to me.

 

[Malcolm R]

Yep, that's what I said earlier in the thread, too.

 

[Darren Haycock]

Does that make Ivy symbolize Michael Moore? I kid, I kid. Oh great, now I've got a mental image of Moore running wildly through the woods.

 

[Andres Munoz]

Did William Hurt's character really mention that it was a 1/2 days travel(by foot) to the "outside"? I could've sworn I saw Ivy camp out for 2 nights. One with Lucius' friend and another on her own. Or was she just staying out of the rain? It was pretty dark though.

BTW, I also loved the scene where Ivy is holding her hand out waiting for Lucius. Very "edge of your seat". Just as you see the "monster" approaching, Lucius shows up, grabs her hand, gets her in the house, closes the door and then gets everyone in the basement...all of this played out in slow motion. Very cool!

 

[Carlo_M]

1/2 days travel to the road. And then from the road, an unspecified distance to the towns, from what I remember. And don't forget her sighted guides leave her before she even gets to the road.


Well, I sure didn't see a "documentary" tag at the beginning of this movie. If things like a girl who is blind but can navigate really well in the village she has lived in all of her life (and she could once see, she wasn't blind from birth) and the fact that someone could pay the government enough money to make a small no-fly zone--remember the Village borders weren't big--are beyond your ability to suspend disbelief, then this movie (as are most of M. Night's, and most of Hollywood's for that matter) is probably not for you.

 

[Vlad D]

I also remember that.

Which reminds me of a funny line. Right when they first enter the woods one of her "chaperons" states (not an exact quote) "why haven't we heard of these rocks before?" That got a big laugh from the audience and from me.

 

[hanson mat]

I thought that scene was incredible... I had NO idea that was coming... I was thinking he was going to be some brave hero that killed off the "creatures".

 

[Holadem]

This is M. Night Shyamalan. Unless you've been living in a village surrounded by evil woods full of flesh eating evil things for the last 5 years, you must know that his movies are never what they appear to be.

I liked it, wasn't blown away by it.

The main difference between this movie and at least two of his previous efforts was that the ending was a resolution to the problem stated at the begining of the movie, i.e. what are these monsters?. The movie answers that question, in a way that may be unexpected to some, but still, it is the question that was asked throughout the movie. Because of that, this movie is not close to being as clever or innovative as the ones that precede it.

Contrast this with the Sixth Sense, where the driving force of the narrative is the kid's problems, only that one finds out after they are resolved, that the movie was about the shrink's journey.

In Signs, the alien invasion seems to be the driving force and focus of the film, distracting everyone from the real theme of the film, faith.

In Unbreakable, while the twist ending was not a departure from the initial theme of the movie (contraly to SS and Signs), it came after the resolution of the main narrative arc and was thus completely unexpected.

In The Village however, the movie was about monsters from the begining to end, despite the personal drama of the characters. Never does the audience stop wondering what the monsters are, they have permeated the whole movie the same way they permeated the existence of these people. The eventual truth (the monster is the outside world) directly answers that question, and does not really redefine the movie the way we are used to from Shyamalan. There is no red herring. Or perhaps the red herring (monsters, what are they?) is more interesting than the truth (people fled the modern world), which definitely wasn't the case with the other movies.

In any case, I suspect the movie would be more succesful had less emphasis been given to the monsters in the ads.

Another departure from his previous work: No character in the movie shared the effect of the big reveal with the audience. The blind lady hasn't a clue what's going on - and didn't care much anyway. We were forced to share the perspective of the park ranger, a perspective which is far less compelling. I believe that this is a serious faux-pas, although I am unsure about how this could have been change while preserving the integrity of the ending.

In the end, I still liked it, and will probably buy it if only for completion's sake as I don't see myself watching often. It's hard to deny the visual flair of this guy, his ability to create tension, to position the threat right at the edge, or outside of the frame.

--
H

 

[Ron-P]

I'm still thinking about this movie which I saw on opening night. Really, really enjoyed it.

M. Nights best cameo shot to date, very funny.

When Lucius was stabbed, our entire theater let out a gasp and then a big ohhhhhh when the second one went in.

From the trailer I was expecting another Signs which I'm sure a lot of us were. It was a pleasant surprise when it turned out not to be.