Beautifully filmed, with an interesting story

Rating: 7/10 (1 August 2004)

I sometimes wonder if M. Night Shymalan has directed himself into a corner after a strong start. Since `The Sixth Sense', audiences have been expecting his films to all be of the same genre, and while his succeeding films have had an underlying theme of the supernatural, he seems to have lost the confidence of the general movie-going public. I think that this is in part due to this nagging feeling I get that he has a lot of self-satisfaction with his work, essentially saying `Look how clever I can be see it? See it?' But even more so, I firmly believe, with all due respect to said general movie-going public, that not every film of his is going to have a huge `twist' in the end, or `Boo!' moments that are going to scare us into nervous laughter  and most importantly, he doesn't purport to do this with all of his films; it is simply the vast chasm between audience expectation and director's intent.
`The Village', Shymalan's latest offering, is the tale of a small 19th century village whose residents live with the daily threat of the unknown creatures which dwell in the woods that border it. There is a `truce' between the residents of these two areas; as long as the villagers don't breach their border, the creatures will leave them alone. One day, however, after the death of a young boy, a young man from the village, Lucius Hunt, (Joaquin Phoenix) after many pleas to the village elders to go through the woods to one of the surrounding towns in order to get medicine to prevent future loss of life. The next day, red marks appear on the door, and the village's animals turn up dead and shorn; presumably, the creatures in the woods are not happy and are declaring `war' on the village.

Shymalan favors a sullen, emotionally pained and quiet protagonist, and `The Village' follows this trend. Phoenix is all large eyes, slightly stooped and silent, while maintaining a large amount of strength and character. His love interest, Ivy Walker, the blind daughter of the unofficial mayor of the village, (Bryce Dallas Howard) is probably the most heroic figure of the film, however, and is definitely the most compelling character. Much has been said of Howard's performance, and the accolades are most definitely warranted. Adrien Brody has a small but important role as Noah, basically the village idiot, and while he speaks very little, Brody's acting is once again unreal. I have admired him since seeing `Summer of Sam' years ago, and he his talent has only strengthened. I didn't even hate William Hurt, which I fully expected to do, just because I find him to be so unbelievably bland. The films he appears in are generally good, but his lack of any kind of dynamic is disappointing. As Edward Walker in `The Village', however, he is not horrid. The production values and cinematography in `The Village' really are quite good  Roger Deakins, who I have greatly admired since his first collaboration with the Coen brothers on Barton Fink, really is a master in his field. His lighting and photography are fantastic in this film, and, as a friend said to me on the drive home from the theater, `the film was really beautiful.'
I went into this film having seen some really bad reviews, but the ones that gave me pause were positive reviews by other critics that I highly respect. I noticed that several of the negative reviews disdainfully compared `The Village' to Shymalan's earlier film, `Unbreakable.' I'm sure it was not the reviewers' intent, but this actually made me want to see this film more, because I think that `Unbreakable' was a fantastic film, but that it was a box office disappointment because it was not a clone of `The Sixth Sense'. Mainstream audiences were expecting another scare-fest, and they got Bruce Willis again, but this time as a sad, beaten-down superhero of some sorts. I found `Unbreakable' to be a very personal and endearing film, and I attribute a lesser degree of those adjectives to `The Village'. It was not a phenomenal film, but it was certainly not a disappointment. The story was solid and kind of left me with the `Hmmminteresting' sentiment that I take away from good episodes of `The Outer Limits' or `Twilight Zone'. The now-expected `twist' was visible by about 2/3 into the film, but who cares? It was still a good story, and the film, while more of a drama than a thriller/horror offering is a solid movie that I feel deserves a lot more credit than it has been given. I'm glad that I didn't let some bad reviews mar my viewing experience because I went into the film with an open mind and came out generally satisfied.
--Shelly