Friday, June 20, 2014

The Village: an SF film

The Village
an SF film


Here's another one of those quiet SF films that I never heard of until I ran across it by accident.  It appeared in 2004 and was written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who has also directed The Last Airbender and The Sixth Sense.  

I'm surprised that I missed this film because it stars William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Joaquin Phoenix, and Bryce Dallas Howard.  With this cast, it should have received more notice.  Of course, I may just have missed it and am the only person in the world who hadn't heard of it.  The background music is also unique in that the solo violinist is Hillary Hahn, a world-class performer who, at age 35, already has won two Grammys. 

The film opens on a quiet village scene, apparently sometime during the 1800s, according to their clothing and the implements they use.  However, something strange appears almost immediately as two young women who are sweeping the porch with brooms make a game of it, dancing with the brooms.  Suddenly the frolicking is interrupted when one spots a red flower.  They stare at it and one wonders where it came from.  One plucks the flower and immediately buries it, saying "bad color, bad color."

The villagers are all from surrounding towns where each has lost someone through violence or has come here to escape violence.  All have taken a vow to remain in the village and not to return to the towns.  It appears to be one of the many utopian communities formed during the 19th century, one of which was featured in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blythedale Romance.  These are the 19th century equivalents of the hippie communes of the 20th century.  

The people are happy and content as they go about their daily chores and work.  The town is self-sufficient as it produces its own food in its own gardens, and it has a small herd of cattle.  We see the women making clothing, and a blacksmith forging tools and other implements.  Ingredients for the meals do not come out of cans or boxes.  Decisions are made by a council of village elders, with William Hurt's character being the unofficial leader.

However, in spite of the ordinariness of their lives,  strangeness appears when we realize that there is a circle of wooden poles surrounding the village that bear lit torches at night.  A guard is posted at night on a tall watch tower that can be reached only by ladder and up through a trap door that is locked by the guard at the top.  Children are warned not to go beyond the barrier.  We also learn that there are creatures out there called "Those We Don't Speak Of," and there seems to be an unspoken agreement that neither bothers the other by coming into the village or going beyond the barrier.  However, several incidents suggest that this agreement is breaking down for some reason.

The first half of the film depicts the lives of these people and the series of disquieting events regarding the relationship of the villagers and "Those We Don't Speak Of."   However, the second half turns into something quite different as it now focuses on the relationship between two of the characters.  A young blind woman, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, goes on a heroic and solitary quest to a nearby town to get some medicine for her newly betrothed lover, played by Joaquin Phoenix.  It is her journey that now becomes the center of the film.  It is because of this journey that dark secrets are revealed, at least for viewers. 


It's an interesting film about a small isolated village whose inhabitants have voluntarily cut themselves off from what they perceive as the dangers of  living in large towns.  The film centers on people and ideas, and the special effects and the usual trappings of action-oriented SF are missing. 

Recommended for those looking for something other than noisy space battles, drooling aliens, and special effects that substitute for plot and character development.



25 comments:

  1. Oh no.
    I haven't seen this particular film, but M. Night Shyamalan? That man makes horrendous films, except "The Sixth Sense" and perhaps "Unbreakable". I don't understand why anyone still financed his projects.

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  2. Di,

    Well, somebody still believes in him. He has quite an extensive list of films as director and producer. I enjoyed this one, but perhaps that's because I have a bias for SF films that aren't overloaded with special effects and computer-generated action scenes.

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  3. Fred,

    I've heard of this film. Critics didn't seem to like it. I've never seen it, but do know what the twist is at the end. Do you think it's still worth watching, knowing the twist, or is it all about the big reveal at the end?

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  4. Cheryl,

    That's a hard question to answer. So much depends upon why you watch films, what's important for you. Part of my interest in the film was trying to figure out just what was going on. I never really figured it out, but I wasn't surprised by the ending because I had a feeling that something else was going on that was hidden, probably something that had hapened at the very beginning of the settlement.

    I might watch it again some day in order to see what I think of it knowing what I know now.

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  5. I hadn't heard of it either, Fred. I am a big fan of William Hurt and have been since Altered States (still one of my all time favorite movies. Dagny

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  6. Madame Vauquer,

    He does a credible job as the nominal leader of the village elders, first among equals, etc. However the focus shifts the second half of the film to the blind girl and her quest for medicines, and Hurt and Sigourney Weaver play secondary roles.

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  7. Apropos of nothing significant, you can count me as another who had never heard of the film. Of course, lack of (1) word-of-mouth support, (2) good reviews, and (3) aggressive marketing and distribution can send some films instantly from movie-houses to DVD. Perhaps this was this film's fate. By the same token, so many horrible movies get a lot of attention and make a lot of money; you can never go wrong when you underestimate the taste of the American public when it comes to movies, music, books, etc. Of course, I am probably being to cynical (which is my natural mode of thinking lately).

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  8. Correction: make that "too cynical" rather than "to cynical." Damned errors!

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  9. RT,

    That's probably what happened--poor reviews and no marketing.

    Who was it who said--P. T. Barnum--nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

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  10. From what I recall, the critics mainly thought the twist was improbable. I remember airplanes being mentioned as one reason. This director became famous through his twist endings, but now I think people are tired of it and want something new from him. (I just saw a comedy sketch on tv yesterday about this.)

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  11. Cheryl,

    Near the end of the film two characters from outside the village are talking and one mentions a recent scandal in which some powerful individual got the FAA to ban all flights over that area.
    Presumably that should take care of the plane problem .

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  12. Fred,

    I guess the critics weren't paying attention during that scene, then. If I can find it, I'll have to watch the film for myself. So much for trusting critics, lol.

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  13. Cheryl,

    It's near the end and it lakes place very quickly. I can easily see why someone would have missed it.

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  14. Fred, forgive this shameless self-promotion, but here is news . . . FYI . . .
    http://beyondeastrod.blogspot.com/2014/06/rt-returns-to-work-at-beyond-eastrod.html

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  15. OK, I found the movie on You Tube and watched it. I'd give it 3 out of 5 stars. In my opinion, it was all about the twist at the end. I wish there would've been more character development with the elders. Their parts seemed not very developed, and so I had no empathy for them. None of the characters were that well developed, and the movie really focused on the plot, instead. It wasn't the worst movie I've seen, and the idea was something different. I think if the script had been written better it would've been a better film.

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    1. Cheryl,

      I would have pushed that rating a bit to 3.5, just to give encouragement to those who try to do an SF film without the excessive special effects, etc. and really try to tell a story.

      I had thought that the film was going to be more about the villagers than any individual members, so I wasn't too disturbed by the lack of character development.. On the other hand, I agree that the elders should have been more fully developed as they were the rulers and also they knew the true situation, as we later find out.

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  16. Fred,

    After I watched this film, I looked at your title and wondered if it really was "an SF film". I might classify it as a psychological film. However, if SF includes the sciences of psychology and sociology, I could see why you'd cal it SF.

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    1. Cheryl, Fred can answer for himself, but whenever I see the "SF" label -- especially as it is used in the last ten or twenty years -- I read it as "speculative fiction" rather than "science fiction." Of course, "speculative fiction" -- a term now commonly used for the genre -- is a rather ambiguous term, especially since (in my view) all fiction is speculative. I look forward to what Fred has to say on he "SF" branding.

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    2. Cheryl,

      Yes, I do consider psychology and sociology as being included with SF. One theme that arises in SF is the isolated community that isn't what it appears to be, but has really set up by an organization as an experiment of some sort. Frequently there are some sort of nonsense rules (red is a bad color) and dire warning about leaving the area.

      There is frequently a very fine line between SF, thrillers, horror, etc stories. I would have no problem if you choose to call this film something other than SF.

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  17. RT,

    I played around with the term "speculative fiction" for awhile also, but then found it too broad. As you say, all fiction can be considered speculative in one way or another. If we are to use labels, then I think we should use those most recognizable to the readers and I think SF as science fiction would be more useful that speculative fiction.

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    1. Well, as science is not always a factor in SF, perhaps we will eventually need another label. But, of course, genre labels are often problematic, especially when genre authors attempt the cross-over into so-called mainstream markets. Publishers, bookstores, and libraries -- of course -- need the genre labels. Otherwise, how would we ever find our favorite genres.

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    2. RT,

      I think we need genre labels as a sort of shorthand. I someone were to ask you what you like to read, and you respond, SF, mysteries, and westerns. Just think how long it would take you to describe those types of works if we didn't have labels.

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  18. Fred, I was one (of the few) obviously, who saw this film a while back. I too would give it a 3.5 star assessment. It WAS all about the ending which, by the way, I figured out rather early - don't know why. But I did like the atmospherics and the ambience. I was willing to suspend my disbelief - hey, if you're not, then don't watch these sorts of movies. In fact, your review has made me want to watch THE VILLAGE again.

    I've got another sci-fi film for you (I know I'm not supposed to use the term sci-fi anymore, but I'm stubborn) which has NO special effects OR costumes OR whatnot. All it has is intelligent talk and a pretty good surprise ending. THE MAN FROM EARTH. No one's ever heard of it, but I wrote about it on my blog a while back. DON'T MISS IT if you haven't seen it already, Fred. It's a doozy. A film I ALWAYS recommend.

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  19. Yvette,

    Yes, the atmosphere of the small isolated town was captured very well, I thought.

    Ah yes, The Man From Earth.. I have heard of it and I posted a commentary on it in August 2013. In Jan. 2014, I posted Some Great DVDs Viewed in 2013 which included a brief commentary about it. I think I mentioned that it so impressed me that I went out and purchased my own copy. It's only one of ten that I've wanted for myself.

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