When approaching the work of writer/director M. Night Shyamalan, I heard one thing as a decided fact, “He made three great movies: The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs and then in 2004 started to slowly rid himself of all that good will for thirteen years. I say thirteen because his most recent thriller, Split, has been on top of the box office for the past 3 weeks. It’s also a REALLY solid piece of work. I also say thirteen because Signs wasn’t his last good movie before his streak of bad movies. In fact Shyamalan made one movie that was overall better than Signs before everything fell apart, and if you know your timeline you’ll know that I’m talking about 2004’s The Village.
Now, the second question you should be asking yourself is why The Village? This was the movie that Shyamalan lost it on. This was the movie that made us think it was a horror movie and turned out to be a suspenseful love story, this was the movie that made us pissy because we guessed how it would end? What the hell is wrong with you for thinking it’s so great? Well, that’s simple. Let me ask you a question. What does film mean to you? Film to me is a tapestry of images to tell a story in a way that will be cathartic and emotionally satisfying for the audience. The film’s quality should be determined by how it makes you feel rather than the way that it irons together or coherently flows. I do understand that plot inconsistencies could be a big deal to many, breaking the magic of a movie for them. This is often the reason why The Village is cited as a bad movie. Yet, I’ll always disagree on that. The Village is a gorgeous, emotional experience, that while flawed holds up remarkably well. Why? Because emotions can cover the flaws of a film. That’s the type of movie that is made in The Village. An emotionally draining, intensely beautiful experience that takes chances and pays off on almost every single one. To those who don’t think that’s true, to each his own, but to me there’s something true to the cinema of Shyamalan’s monster movie effort. Something disturbing about the way it manipulates its audience. Something fascinating. And yet there are still maligned sequences to the work, notably one involving a confession of love, one involving a violent silence, a few involving exposition dumps, and one involving a Spielbergian use of suspense. Why these sequences are disregarded I’ll never know, but let’s take a lot at them. To understand the scenes we need to understand the plot and all of the moving parts to the work, as well as the meaning of many of the turns that the story takes. First, subversion must be addressed. A key to Shyamalan’s well rated works was an astute knowledge of the genres that he was working in. Both The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable (cough’ damn near masterpieces cough’) are films that know their genres. They know the expectation for both the straight drama and the supernatural elements in their genre and manipulated the audience to an emotional breaking point. A superhero film slowly using the stereotypes of established tropes to subtly hint toward the ending? Great! The fact that all of it paid off emotionally in those films? Even better. Signs has a lack of subversion which makes it’s flaws more glaring. It was an alien movie and it was simply that, which allowed the idiosyncratic nature of the dialogue and the characters to show. There’s nothing else going on except a riff on the oddities of alien movies and the prophetic nature of children and God. Then there’s The Village where there’s expansion rather than subversion. Often, the lack of subversion seems to warrant a lesser film from Shyamalan, but it doesn’t. It’s hard to subvert the idea of the monster movie. The monster movie, doesn’t usually have very much going on. Our characters, the fodder for the monsters, arrive into the frame, they are executed one by one after an inciting event, their actions building the character around them. There’s not much depth to that. Not much going on in the monster movie, unless the message is unsubtly draped over the film. This has made for incredible works and yet none bring the same narrative depth as Shyamalan’s The Village. The Village is an easy film to try and immediately mark as subversive, but rather coy in its subversion, but that may have never been the point. Sure, Shyamalan might not have much to “say” about monster movies in the way that he did for ghost stories and superheroes, but the overall complexity built on top of the basic structure makes up for that. The entirety of the opening 50 minutes the film intentionally convinces us that the film is a monster movie of a simple kind, but it is still ever more enticing and exciting. The film exists in a town in the 1800’s (supposedly) where the townspeople are kept in the village by the threat of monsters called Those We Don’t Speak Of. Bryce Dallas Howard is our star, a blind girl named Ivy and Joaquin Phoenix plays Lucius, the love interest who wishes to venture into the woods, which are the monster’s domain. The monsters are scary and the actors in their characters are wonderful, and yet the true monster of the film hangs at the fringes. This does require that I reveal what exactly is the monster in its most vicious form: the humans themselves. It is revealed later in the film that the monsters and the fear are all things orchestrated by the Elders, as they attempt to shelter their children from the outside world. They instruct their children to destroy things that are red (connoting lust, love and passion) because it will draw the monsters into the village. This sheltering manifests itself in a great sequence of scenes as Kitty Walker (Judy Greer) explains to her father Edward (William Hurt), that she loves a boy and wishes to marry. It is soon revealed that she wants to do so without having the permission of the boy to which her father responds that he consents but she needs to ask the boy first. This leads into the first emotionally charged and beautiful number of scenes of the film. Kitty approaches the man, Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix) and in an emotionally stunted way joyously confesses her love to him. “I love you Lucius. I love you like the day is long. I love you more than the sun and moon forever. And if you feel the same way, we should not hide it any longer. It’s a gift, love is,” (Shyamalan 25) This is a moment that I feel like many would have laughed at, but it’s important to consider the emotional response that this warrants. There’s an unwanted sincerity in Kitty’s voice that is uncomfortable. This isn’t how it’s supposed to work. The innocence is so abundant in her life that she cannot function in a way that is easily digestible by the audience. This is the case with many of the characters and it often becomes a point of speaking that they talk oddly and innocently. This, I feel is intentional. There’s a quiet, scared quality to their voices unless they finally get a disorienting moment of joy like this one. The camera just sits there making us watch. Laughable is the farthest this is from. This is a person who doesn't know how to feel. A person who believes that the color red draws creatures that could murder her. A person trying to understand the concept of love. A spectacular smash cut breaks the audience in quickly into looking deeper into the emotions of the characters. The Village is made up of many moments like this, that ask you to look deeper into the emotions of the characters because they too often don’t speak to each other about their true intentions. There’s a suspense to the repressed nature of all of it. Lucius calls to his mother in an intense conversation “Sometimes we don’t do things- yet others know we want to do them- so we don’t do them,” (Shyamalan 45). Powerful statements, delivered in a confused inflection, creates narratively complex characters which covers up many flaws in the film. Excellent direction and cinematography helps as well. The few scenes of violence as a result of this repression also contributes to this. Noah Percy (Adrien Brody) is a mentally challenged man, who, fueled by his ignorance and his own problems is unable to understand the consequences of the love that he feels and the violence that he doles out and is more terrifying than any monster could be. The moment when he actually stabs Lucius ( thought to be the main character for the past 50 minutes) is a masterclass of calming violence. This is a monster film and it’s just taken its first victim. The shocking moments aren’t full of the screams and the noise of Those We Don’t Speak of, but the silence that it takes to calmly slide a knife between the ribs of a fellow patron. The silent horror that comes with that. I find it interesting that Shyamalan dares us to be scared at the moments of large flamboyant sound when in fact the scariest and most harmful moment of the film comes with a peculiar silence. Silence shrouds many scenes and connotes fear all the way through. Second viewings of the film allow the silence to become even more terrifying and special as the film affords many moments of quiet whispering talk. Shyamalan makes films like this often, where the mood is thick enough to deal with the overall flawed plot structure that he presents. Just watch the wave sequence in The Last Airbender and tell me that he’s a bad director. Watch the ending of Split, watch damn near anything except all of The Happening, Lady in the Water and The Visit and you’ve got a well-directed piece of work. Many people had a problem with the structure near the end of the picture citing an overuse of exposition as the main detractor as well as the revealing too early of what the monsters are The monsters are the elders in elaborate suits. This is all revealed in long exposition that is delicately captured in brutally emotional sequences that bring more and more to the forefront about the true manifestation of the “monster.” This exposition is often regarded as the moment when the movie stops being as excellent as it previously was. But that is not the case, Shyamalan and his great actor William Hurt create a scene that seems poetic in its exposition. The use of a handheld cam as they walk displaying the beauty of Hurt’s performance infuses the scene with an ebb and flow that keeps the audience riveted, ever more spurred on by the wonderful score. It may be a little much, but the welling of emotion coming from the acting and direction is undeniable. The scenes of large expositions also work especially well because they use the Spielberg technique. The background is always moving, the score is always drifting along emotionally and lightly. There’s always something pushing the calm melancholy of these characters. The actors are always intense. There’s a luscious quality to even the most stagnant moments of the screenplay. There’s such an emotional tone to Hurt and the other actors throughout the film that is impossible to ignore. Many seem so muddled and confused. On the edge of tears unable to comprehend the emotions that they are burdened with. This is a film of monologues often, mainly because Edward wishes to display a reason for their actions. Near the end of the film Hurt tells the Elders to their horror that he has allowed Ivy to venture into the world to get medicine for the dying Lucius, and the handheld cam returns as Hurt proclaims in one of his best scenes, “Yes I have risked, I hope I am always able to risk everything for the right and just cause. If we did not make this decision-we could never again call ourselves innocent,” (Shyamalan 105). These scenes are cited as those too heavy handed for the movie, and yet Hurt’s genuinely intense performance and the handheld cam putting him in a corner surrounded, lashing out beautifully and verbally at the other Elders as James Newton Howard’s score squeezes the melancholy of their decision out all but covers up the lack of subtlety. These are people that can only wait silently for their paradise to either fall apart or stay together. Elements like these coming together cannot help but make up for the contrived twist going on in the larger plot machinery. This brings me to a scene that many do not enjoy, the attack by the monster in the woods. Most people shrug the scene off as a badly structured scene that is unrealistic, citing the guttural noises that the monster (actually Noah Percy) makes as unbelievable, and the overall fact that the audience knows that the monsters are not real. That said, it’s still one of the best scenes of the movie, and of Shyamalan’s career. Why? Because much like with the exposition scenes, a sense of swift, suspenseful filmmaking can make a scene work. Here this is done perfectly. So, here’s the setup. Ivy, knowing that the monsters aren’t real and that there is another town with medicine, ventures into the woods. We suddenly see that color red. Red has been said to draw Those We Don’t Speak Of. This should immediately put our guard up. Even not considering the terrifying implications of one of the creatures actually attacking Ivy (i.e. that an elder or townsperson is trying to savagely murder her), the film has taught us to fear the color red. Then slowly the camera turns around to reveal the creature, red-cloaked and not immediately scary. An animal. That’s not the end of it, though. Shyamalan lets us know there’s more urgency as he starts using a handheld camera. The composure (and the composition, much of the calmer moments of the film use dollies and tripods, while the intense moments allow for a more handheld use) of the safe village slowly fades away as Ivy, blind, starts to make her way behind a tree. The camera obscures the creature not letting us see it until we slowly realize that it has swiftly and quietly made his way to the tree. The following moments as Ivy makes her way from the tree into an area of little cover brings greater suspense, and then a moment of silence. We see the creature standing still, wondering intently whether or not it is there to attack Ivy or help her. This could in fact just be a townsperson there to guide Ivy along. Silence fills the screen. And then it runs at her. The moment is wonderfully executed. We’ve seen the “calm before the storm” many times in film, but Shyamalan lets the silence go on just a little long. It becomes meandering, almost to the point of boring. Comforting, like the calmness before the shark pops up and scares Brody in Jaws. There are many seeming plot and diegetic inconsistencies (let’s call them logical leaps to simplify) to this scene, but you don’t often see them through the allure of the fear that it is all steeped in. You’re welcome to disagree with me on the complexity and richness of The Village but the more than ever now, I am impressed by its beauty and narrative ambition. This is a monster movie and a flawed one that builds a beautiful atmosphere and story into the construction of the monster movie. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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The first time I saw The Lobster, (still one of the best films of the year if you’re keeping track), the craft of filmmaking and the way that it’s director, Yorgos Lanthimos, created expectation and then shot that in the foot on camera multiple times stuck out to me. This is a film about deflation and the way that relationships are not just built on a few things, but many. Something that I noticed as well during the film was the fact that it seemed cold, and empty, but not in a bad way. There seemed a great craft in this. How though could cold and empty be of good craft? Aren’t movies in fact supposed to provide entertainment through catharsis? They do,The Lobster is just entertaining in an odd way.
The second time I saw The Lobster, I had the great opportunity to see where this entertainment came from, and how such an odd film aesthetically, isn’t really odd at all, but actually quite familiar to the thematic blood that one finds in one of the greatest novels of all time: Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. What an odd comparison, but the same craft that Gustave Flaubert contributed to his classic novel of contrasting realism and Romanticism, is used by the screenwriters Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou to build their story of love and violence in The Lobster. But on that note we need to dig a little bit deeper, and while it’s not the deepest similarity we need to look at characters and the way they interpret the world. The world of The Lobster requires that all people must have a partner, or they will be sent to a hotel where they stay for 45 days. At the end of these days if a partner has not been found, the person in question will be turned into an animal of their choice and released into the wild. David, the main character has just been left by his wife of 12 years and has now come to the hotel with his brother, who is now a dog. Madame Bovary lives in a world where she’s given by mainly herself and outside sources a sense of unrealistic Romanticism for both the world and mainly love. She thinks she lives in a large wonderful world, but actually lives in a bleak farm town, that is too plain for the likes of her. Both of these characters are basically the same, but in The Lobster, the ignorance afforded to Emma Bovary is more of a cultural sickness. These are people living in a dull, almost flat looking world that think that things like encompassing love exists and bright colors, much like Emma Bovary. The cinematography, beautiful done by Thimios Bakatakis, in The Lobster shows the world to be oddly cold for as impassioned that the characters seem. The faults of Emma Bovary are the faults of the society here, and the results are just as jarring and hilarious. The similarities of character and interpretation in the world almost seem superficial when one considers what really ties together these two works of art. This comes in the way they are presented to the audience. I said earlier that The Lobster took a lot from Madame Bovary, this coming in the way that both works create humor through deflation. Consider the moment of Madame Bovary when Homais, the pretentious pharmacist writes a letter detailing the great achievement of the clubfoot operation that Emma’s bumbling husband has just performed to disastrous effect (not that Homais or most characters know this yet) only to be interrupted with the realistic and unnerving statement about the patient “Help! he is dying! I am going crazy!,” (145), is almost no different in style of deflation than the moments of expectation building to deflation in The Lobster, such as a moment between two women one’s final day before her transformation. The moment is difficult to explain quickly, but two women characters who we as an audience perceive as excellent lovers, in that they seem to have an actual friendship connection, rather than the black and white attraction of similarities that the rest of the society is built on, are meeting for the last time before one is turned into an animal, the other having found her partner on the basis that they both got bloody noses from time to time (ie. black and white attraction of similarities).. The partnered girl reads her a letter of great intimacy: THE LETTER “We always sat together at school, and when I had a problem I always came to you because you had the best advice. When we didn’t manage to find dance partners at the school prom, the fact that we were together at that difficult moment gave me strength. I’m sorry that things have come to this. I’m sure if you had a few more days you would find someone just like I did.” These do not seem to be words of a friend, but one of a lover. This is intimate and beautiful stuff that coupled with the actresses performances brings the audience to Romantic high...but it turns there at the ending doesn’t it. “...find someone just like I did.” It turns and the realism of the moment is heartbreaking, yet funny. It’s frustrating. The letter reads to it’s end as a somewhat pompous, stuck up contemplation of how the writer will remember her good friend, and the other girl smacks her. Realism has trumped our feelings of Romanticism, Flaubert and Lanthimos are playing the same game, and with equally cold but tickling results. Both works are in essence about making the audience feel the way the characters do and the Romantic sickness of The Lobster and Madame Bovary are one in the same as well as the way they use emotional manipulation to deflate in inspiring and hysterical ways. Bibliography: 1. Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. NA. Norton, 2004. Print 2. Lanthimos, Yorgos. Filippou, Efthymis. "The Lobster." Film script. 2014 |
AuthorStephen Tronicek. Archives
July 2017
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