M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village"

No one does, but sometimes the masses are right!

 

Uh, Siskel died in early 1999...

 

I disliked it but am open to giving it another shot.

Was gonna rent the BD from Netflix but it's not on BD! I'm surprised - I thought this one would've gotten a Blu release years ago...

 

I saw that one theatrically but not since then - I should also try it again.

Theatrically, I thought it was laughably bad - literally. I'm not usually one to laugh at movies due to unintentional comedy, but some of the scenes in "The Happening" were so silly that I couldn't help it!

 

That's actually a perfect assessment of what types of stories he often tells. The problem, I think, is that he's viewed,as a one trick pony and he uses the same trick every time (I.e., the "twist ending")

 

My memory of Night's movies has been shown to be suspect earlier in this thread but...

I don't really recall "Signs" having a twist ending. There was the "War of the Worlds" deus ex machina that got rid of the aliens, but I wouldn't really call that a twist. The reality of what we had been watching wasn't overturned, i.e., there actually were aliens invading.

 

In Signs, it was just that all of the things around Mel Gibsons's character had happened for a reason, which was to show the way to save his son by stopping the last alien.

But no, it was not really a twist.

 

Then it was Ebert & Ebert.

I think it was a twist to reveal that YES, the aliens were real. The camera footage on the news was the shocking reveal.

The biggest hole in Sixth Sense was Willis already being at the kid's house, sitting in the living room next to the kid's mother. You wonder who she's been talking to for the last 20 minutes...

 

I walked out during that movie and demanded my money back. They said I had watched more than half and couldn't get my money back. More than half the theater walked out during the 'twist'.

 

You'd think after Willis attempted to talk to her for 20 minutes with no response whatsoever, he might wonder what is up.

If you want to take this idea even further, he didn't spend every waking moment of his time with the kid, so didn't he wonder why absolutely no one else on Earth seemed to acknowledge his existence?

 

Exactly. He's unable to interact with anyone and the only person who acknowledges his existence is a kid who sees dead people. He probably hasn't eaten either. Wouldn't all of this add up to a horrifying realization within a couple of days?

 

I don't think his character experiences our world in real time. Kind of like in a dream that seems real, but when you wake up it doesn't make much since. Also the way dreams skip around, but seem correct while we are dreaming.

Think of other people the boy encounters. The boy in the house seems to keep going to look at his dad's gun collection. The girl keeps throwing up. I think these people keep experiencing the same things over and over, because they are stuck.

It seems normal to them, but it is not linear.

 

They did briefly show him trying to have dinner with his ex-/whatever- girlfriend, and she ignored him and Willis assumed she was angry about some kind of fight. But you'd think he'd start to wonder why he couldn't order food at any restaurant, and in fact why he was never hungry and never needed to sleep. There's a lotta little issues that make the movie fall apart when you start thinking about it too hard.

But Hitchcock made a few movies like that, too, and his joke was, "the audience will only figure that out by the time they're leaving the theater at the end and walking to their cars... and we already have their money!"

Shyamalan doesn't talk about the movie much in interviews, but when he has answered he's basically said that the dead are walking around in a kind of dream-like state where they're not paying close enough attention to realize their dead. There have been past movies like Carnival of Souls where this was the major plot gimmick. They also did it in Lost as I recall.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/8-dumb-ghosts-who-were-too-dumb-too-realize-they-were-d-1717751792

 

Regarding The Sixth Sense, the whole, "why didn't Willis' character realize this, or shouldn't he have figured out that" argument is a non-issue to me. It boils down to one word - Denial. The dead don't know they're dead because they don't WANT to know they're dead. It's a theme that's prevalent in lots of Japanese movies and anime - the dead are wandering around aimlessly often due to not acknowledging they are, in fact, dead.

In these works of fiction, just because you die doesn't immediately make you omniscient. Ghosts are stubborn mofo's it seems.

Oh, and to return to the topic of the thread, I very much liked The Village. It does play fast and loose with logic, but it's still enjoyable, and I don't consider it a bad movie in the least.

 

I keep hearing the notion that it strains logic or there are plot holes in The Village. I would like examples, as I think all the bases are covered.

Remember, it is not like you or I are dropped in the village. We would realize what was going on (and maybe some realized it in the theatre), but these kids have never known anything else. They trust the elders.

I think it holds together quite well.

 

Plot holes? How about the entire premise concocted by the adults? An idiotic response to the violence they experienced that has no possible resolution other than one day in the future the whole farce they concocted is revealed to whoever is left living there. We are not talking Amish or Mennonites here, but kids who are kept ignorant of the real world around them and scared into conformance by the threat of monsters. This seemed like a good idea to these parents?

I guess if you can swallow that main premise, little things like the no-fly zones and a preservation that can actually keep out all nature lovers, hikers, etc. -people who routinely ignore signs and walls and seek out solitude, is easy to do.

 

1. The adults have severe mental issues. When that happens, people do weird things. But what if one of the people is a billionaire? Then you could do your weird thing on a grand scale (see: Wayne, Bruce). Their plan was to create a utopia (certainly attempted many times in the real world), where their children would never know the evils of the world, and the elders would never have to endure them again. A peaceful community with no bloodshed or violence. Do I think the elder's plan is a good one? No. Do I think it is a good premise for a film? Yes.

2. The Preserve is constantly guarded. Could it be possible for someone to sneak in past the guards? Sure. But the film does at least take that possibility into account.

 

I respect your opinion, but I don't find it any more far fetched than a million other films. A giant gorilla who falls in love with a human woman, and ends up climbing to the top of the Empire St. Building? Preposterous. (I love King Kong '33) But its pretty much the same for every action, romantic, or horror flick.

The Village is probably a flawed film, I can accept that. But I still find the film entertaining. I have to suspend disbelief in just about every film I watch. I don't find the Village any more egregious when it comes to that kind of thing.

 

I can suspend my disbelief too...but there are limits.

 

Again, I don't see why a film like the Village stretches the limits but people are ok with superhero movies, monster movies, movies where actors survive incredible odds even though they've been brutally outnumbered throughout the film. Bond films, Science Fiction films, Star Wars, Star Trek. Comedies that involve far fetched scenarios. Animated films where cartoons speak, nevermind animals or inanimate objects. Movies where dinosaurs roam the earth. Films that have happy endings. Films where a wacky pair who hate each other through the entire film end up in love. (barf) Films where everyone throughout history speak in an English accent. Hell man, I could go on forever listing limit stretching plot devices. And The Village is where you draw the line?

 

It's not really clear if they think they will scare the kids into living there forever, or even want that, though they do have an argument about this somewhat when the William Hurt character reveals to the other elders that he told Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) the creatures in the woods were fake and were actually the elders with costumes. Maybe there would always be a small group of elders who know the secret and think its worthwhile to keep everyone living in their sheltered utopia.

I watched it this morning and its really quite a cast. In addition to the big names (Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Joaquin Phoenix, Bryce Dallas Howard) there is also Adrien Brody (wasn't this right after his Oscar for "the Pianist"?), Judy Greer, Jesse Eisenberg, Cherry Jones, Brendan Gleeson and Jayne Atkinson. Add in Michael Pitt (from Boardwalk Empire) and Fran Kranz (The Dollhouse) and its quite a collection of big names and ones who would go on to bigger things.

 

In the book on Lady in the Water on of the Disney exe's states that they thought the problem with "The Collage" we're the tombstones in the beginning which suggests it takes place in the 19th century she stated that a any audience members disliked it bexause he lied to them from the first frame. When the director is the unreliable narrator it spells problems for audiences.

 

Yeah, I noticed that scene. It opens with a burial of Brendan Gleeson's son and the gravestone reads 1890-1897. I thought about that and I guess you could say why does it matter WHAT year the elders tell the kids it is, as long as they control everything else. So maybe they could have still told the kids the actual year, but if they have any schools and teach any history (have they heard of The Civil War, the American Revolution, etc?), this could present a problem. So it would make sense to just set a clock/calendar at the village to 1880 or whenever it was they moved there.

Audiences are funny in what they get mad about, but directors and studios need to take that into account. If the movie had put some on screen text that said "Western Pennsylvania, 1897" at the beginning, THAT would be director lying to them. I don't see the gravestone as quite the same as I accept that the elders are putting on a farce and committed to it.

 

The only problem with that is that the kids wouldn't know either way. They could tell them it was 2004 and still live in 19th century style. It was done to mislead the audience pure and simple-- a form of misdirection for the audience that was unnecessary. The characters didn't need to see it but we were shown it as a means to trick us. All we as the audience needed to see was the village, the style of their language and discussion of their living conditions.

They could always adjust the history teaching them things that may occurred before the village was "founded". It wouldn't matter when what year they teach them they could only address the history before the current date. The other much broader issue is that WE don't need to see the year at all. Yet by establishing a year and deliberately showing it to the audience, it's a way to mislead the audience.

The bottom line is that the Disney executive was right--it was designed to dupe the audience and it was a misstep.

I think MNS felt it was necessary to "sell" it with a bit of slight-of-hand but it was being dishonest with the audience and audience's don't forget that. They want a chance to figure things out.

 

They are taught. Mr. Walker teaches a class, and since he taught history at a college, I would assume he teaches that also. It would be much easier to teach real history and stop at 1860, than to try and make up history with a false date.

I think it would be common sense to pick a year from the past make everything fit it. I think if this film had come out before the other 3 films, it would no be judged by these standards.