Shyamalan has struck out with “The Village”

The Village (2004)
Buena Vista Pictures presents a M. Night Shyamalan film, starring Bryce Howard, William Hurt and Joaquin Phoenix. Written by Shyamalan. 120m. Rated PG-13 for a scene of violence and frightening situations.

1.5 stars

In baseball, those who talk in cliches say players who are trying too hard for their success are “trying to hit a five-run home run” - a result unattainable in the modern construction of the game.

M. Night Shyamalan has stepped to the proverbial plate and struck out trying to hit a five-run home run with “The Village,” the latest in a string of disappointments since his excellent debut, “The Sixth Sense.”

From a land that time has seemed to forgot lives Edward Walker (William Hurt), the self-righteous but soft spoken elder of a quaint quasi-Amish settlement. The village is so intimate, everyone congregates for meat and a steaming bowl of corn on the cob at the same set of tables.

The villagers are cut off from the rest of civilization, the elders say, by “those we don’t speak of” - monsters attracted to shades of red who attack anyone who crosses over the wooded boundaries.

The fearless and taciturn Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) petitions the council to travel to “the towns” for needed medical supplies. While the elders mull this idea, a villager is brutally attacked with a knife. As they lay dying, Edward’s blind daughter Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) offers to travel outside the borders for the necessary equipment, hoping the monsters will smell her innocence and righteous intentions and let her pass.

It’s maddening to talk about the plot in such vague terms. Yet one of the few true joys that can be derived from the movie is in guessing the purpose of the antiquated village. Keen observers may have the entire puzzle figured out after the first stinger: a brief glimpse of the red hooded monster about 30 minutes into the film.

Audiences who do figure out the attempted “five run home run” are most likely going to be disappointed. The reveal is not nearly as stunning as finding out Bruce Willis was dead in “The Sixth Sense.”

While they wait, they’ll be exposed to the most bathetic screenwriting as elders like Alice Hunt (Sigourney Weaver) and Edward Walker engage in clumsy affairs - the type so ill-conceived you’d expect a scene of disappointing sex to follow. There’s a reason people laugh at the maudlin affairs we called features from the 1930s. Nobody watches “Wuthering Heights” and actually thinks Heathcliff is going to die if he isn’t allowed to love Catherine enough.

Add to this a nauseating type of speaking in which villagers construct sentences in this way: “I am but scared for my only son’s life.” If this movie doesn’t have you rolling your eyes while you’re waiting for its silly payoff, you have a stronger resistance to schmaltz than I do.

The movie does have its moments of hope. Although I think it’s often pretentious and overblown, I could always appreciated the unique camera spins, pans and zooms employed by ardent film school follower Shyamalan. His casting of Academy Award winner Adrien Brody as the village’s idiot is an inspired turn; newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard - the daughter of actor/director Ron Howard - demonstrates promise as well.

During the movie, I spent my time unearthing the nugget of truth hidden in this river of waste. The village is a microcosm for the current America, it seems, because it exists in a state of perpetual fear of the unknown. Since Sept. 11, Americans have been told there’s a minatory presence who wants to attack our water supplies, our small towns, our big corporate giants or our airports. Our yearning to extend beyond our boundaries, Shyamalan may be saying, have caused these undue attacks. But which came first: Did we instigate such attacks by charging through like Manifest Destiny? Or did others attack us because we dared to encroach on their land? Villagers of the movie seemed to have ruined their utopia by arming us with the very thing which could ultimately destroy it: knowledge.