media consumption

The Village

Is M. Night Shyamalan our generation's Aflred Hitchcock? Not yet, but he seems to be concsiously cultivating that reputation. Before we went to The Village this afternoon, it was described to us as "Hitchcockian" by two different sets of friends and I have to say that the label fits.

The setting is a small, self-contained, self-sufficient 19th century village that is cut off from the outside world by a ominous and menacing forest populated by creatures whom the villages refer to as "those we do not speak of" (a strange name in light of the villager's otherwise overly formal grammar). You can learn from the trailer that the long-standing, uneasy truce between the villagers and the creatures of whom they do not speak begins to unravel during the course of the film with all kinds of thrilling implications for the movie-goer. But that's all I'm going to say about the plot.

This film is genuinely suspenseful and eerie with a series of well-crafted plot twists that keep you in your seat and guessing right up to the end. There are no gratuitously violent scenes and no high-tech special effects. In the best Hitchcock tradition, suspense is built into the storyline and heightened and maintained by carefully constructed camera-work and musical score. No one disputes Shyamalan's artistic chops; this film is beautifully shot and wonderfully acted (although the stilted 19th c. dialogue started to get on my nerves) and the plot-twists are mostly unpredictable and thought provoking.

So why did I feel so let-down by the time the credits started rolling? Maybe it's because I felt used. Shyamalan is so good at building suspense that once he pulls back the curtain, all that's left is an anti-climactic void. That's not to say this isn't a movie worth seeing. In fact, I recommend it. As I said, it is beautiful and will keep you thinking for a while after, but I left the theater feeling generally unsettled. Maybe that's why the most respected of reviewers are so evenly divided on this film, it is hard to justify a strong opinion one way or the other.

Have you ever seen the inside of a golf ball? Cut off the white plastic shell, and about two miles of thin rubber bands will explode all over the place, leaving behind a small, hard ball of rubber. That's what watching an M. Night Shyamalan film is like. Once you're past the shock of the surprise, the remaining core seems less than impressive. But it sure is fun getting there.

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