Tonight after work, I watched M. Night Shyamalan's 2004 thriller-masterpiece (thrilsterpiece? no, that's not good...) The Village. It had been sitting in my family's TV cabinet for years and I'd never really looked at it--nor had anyone else apparently, as it was pretty dusty when I picked it out to bring back to school with me last week. I'd seen a few of M. Night's movies, knew he was famous for The Twist Ending (that guy was Bruce Willis the whole time! ... anyone?), and didn't really go either way on the love him/hate him front. I had no idea what this movie was about, except a village (duh) and some ominous music I remembered from the trailer when it came out originally. Of the friends I watched it with, one had seen it but didn't remember the twist, and one was as clueless as me, so I was in good company for a first time viewing. Beware: here there be spoilers!
I like movies that make me think, ones that leave me speechless, ones that don't do my thinking for me. The Village was like that for me. The Village was billed as horror, I suppose, but it was so much more: the fact that you see the creatures, The Ones We Do Not Speak Of, halfway through the movie--albeit from afar and relatively blurrily--makes it less of a monster thriller and more about the people in the town itself. Sometimes the creepiest horror stories are the ones that aren't about the supernatural or the unexplainable; they are the ones about real flesh-and-blood humans and the way our natures can go terribly wrong.
I really want the twist to be that this village is a cult and outside it's really like 2009. But probly not. #TheVillage #thatsnotthetwist
— Caitlin Clayton (@caitclay) July 31, 2013
This was like 40 minutes into the movie. I'm not saying I'm psychic buuuut...
A general rundown of the story if it's been a while for you: everybody lives in this quaint little countryside village, ostensibly in the middle of nowhere, but there is obviously fear here--exhibit A, two full-skirted girls having a wonderful time sweeping the porch when they see a scary red flower and run a safe distance away from the house to bury it without explanation but with mortal terror in their eyes. The Elders run the town, and it is made up mostly of the parents of each of our protagonists: handicapped Noah Percy (Adrien Brody)'s parents have no audible names but cry a lot toward the end of the film; heartthrob Lucius Hunt--who does not bounce about like the other boys, father--is brought to brooding life by Joaquin Phoenix and is mothered by the incomparable Sigourney Weaver, who wears no makeup and has a lot of sexual tension; blind Ivy Walker (badass then-newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard) is one of the daughters of the revered Reverend Edward Walker (William Hurt) and his wife Tabitha (Jayne Atkinson), who obviously isn't that into him because papa Walker is said to be the cause of mama Hunts aforementioned sexual tension. Angsty Irishman Brendan Gleeson is August Nicholson, whose pain pushes our story into motion with the loss of his son. Ever-honorable Lucius approaches Ye Olde Council to ask permission to go through the forest of beasties to fetch medical supplies that could've saved Nicholson's son, but everyone says no because they don't want to breach the boarder and make Those We Do Not Speak Of angry enough to attack again. Business as usual: people are married, loves are professed, but the attacks come anyway. Even in this quaint little nowhere town jealousy comes to rear its ugly head, bringing with it attempted murder: Noah stabs Lucius after the latter announces his intentions to marry Ivy, and Ivy leaves her beloved on his deathbed to go to the towns and subsequently learn what the deal is with their perfect little town.
It would've been easy for this movie to fail based on characters alone. It is difficult to write a blind or mentally handicapped character without making their pain seem co-opted, but Shyamalan worked the intricacies of each character's disability into their mannerisms, their speech, and ultimately their actions (i.e. the plot). At one point, my friend asked, "Ok, whyyy do you send the blind girl to "the towns" through the creepy monster-infested woods," and while part of the answer is to further the plot (she can't see modernity outside the walls, so the towns dirty little secret stays safe), but it is also because that is her character, and because of her blindness, Ivy has actually become one of the most capable and aware characters in the entire story. She continues to have footraces with Noah and break up fights and dance the lovely choreographed dances that everyone in town knows and even go to the freaking forbidden forest alone because her escorts are awful and pansy-assed. While at first I was irked that the female protagonist was the blind one (disabled by a man, and other feminist inklings), I grew more and more impressed with Ivy Walker, standing her ground to wait and see if Lucius was safe during the attack, continuing on through the forest and killing the monster that stalked her in the woods; basically never giving up, even when faced with the very evil her she grew up fearing though her father just recently told her it was a hoax (I mean, hearing and believing are two very different things). She was dedicated to her goal and came back to her love, and the movie closed on her face, staring straight into the camera with unseeing eyes, as she so often did. I loved her.
Look at that face. That girl gives no fucks.
Later, my boyfriend and I discussed the ending. He mentioned how he would've liked the original draft ending better; where death itself was watching over the town which was in some sort of limbo. I agree that that particular ending would be excellent as well, but I kind of liked how it was brought down to earth, how the most unexpected thing to do in a supernatural monster movie is to make the monsters actually humans and the whole thing a grand experiment that makes poor security guard Kevin question what he is doing with his godforsaken life. The slow reveal of more and more toward the end is typical of a Shyamalan flick, and I think the quality of having to think backward after a film is over is one of my favorite aspects of a well-done movie like this.
Now, I'm not saying that every aspect of the plot works logistically and some of the questions I had after the movie ended were certainly substantial, (like why they went back to the 1800s, why the only way they made them sound old timey was to eliminate contractions, how the village was going to continue when the elders were no more, etc) but The Village was cinematically executed to a near-perfection. Shyamalan used every masking of the frame to enhance who was speaking, allowing the camera to follow Ivy from the back so we too were blind as she walked, focusing on hands and feet and movement rather than particular faces, intense color binaries unexplained early on and left to pop up again and again until we understood them better--these are the things that made me love this movie.
After re-watching the trailer, it occurs to me that I watched the film on the anniversary of it coming out in theaters. Huh.
The Village, 2004. Dir. M. Night Shyamalan. Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Adrien Brody.
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