The Village (film)
The Village is a 2004 film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan that explores the dynamics of an insular turn-of-the-20th-century village and the collective fears of its members. Like most of Shyamalan's films its plot is built around a twist ending. Although The Village ranked number one in box office sales on its opening weekend in the United States, it was not as successful as some of Shyamalan's earlier movies.
Spoiler
Plot
Plot
The film opens on the funeral of a child in a small village.
The death date on the tombstone establishes the date as 1897. As the story progresses
it is revealed that the villagers live in fear of nameless creatures in the woods
that surround the village. They have built a barrier of oil lanterns and watch
towers that are constantly manned to keep watch for Those We Don't Speak Of. It
is explained that the villagers have a long-standing truce with Those We Don't
Speak Of; the villagers don't go into their woods, and the creatures don’t
enter their village. Even so, dead, skinned bodies of small animals are starting
to appear around the village.
After the death of the child, Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) asks the Elders (the village's governing leaders) for permission to pass through the woods to get medical supplies from "the towns". His request is turned down and later he is admonished by his mother Alice (Sigourney Weaver) for wanting to go to the towns, described as "wicked places where wicked people live". It is revealed in that scene that the Elders seem to keep dark secrets of their own in the form of black boxes, the contents of which they keep hidden from their own offspring. After Lucius makes a short venture into the woods the creatures leave warnings around the village in the form of splashes of red paint (referred by the villagers only as "the bad color") on all the villagers' doors.
Meanwhile, Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard), the blind daughter of the head Elder, Edward Walker (William Hurt), informs Lucius that she has strong feelings for him, and he returns her affections. They arrange to be married, but things go horribly wrong when Noah Percy (Adrien Brody), a friend of Ivy and Lucius who is mentally disabled and apparently enamored of Ivy, jealously attacks Lucius with a knife, seriously wounding him.
Edward goes against the wishes of the other Elders, agreeing to allow Ivy to pass through the forest and seek out medicine for Lucius. Before she leaves the first plot twist is revealed when Edward explains the secret of the creatures — they are fabrications created by the Elders in an attempt to keep any of their children from leaving the village. He does mention though that he had heard rumors of "real creatures" living in the woods.
While Ivy is traveling through the forest, one of the beasts suddenly attacks her. She cunningly tricks it into falling into a hole in the ground where it is killed by the fall. It is then the second plot twist is revealed — the creature is actually Noah in a creature costume that he had found under the floor of the room he had been locked in. It is implied in that scene that it has been Noah skinning the animals all along.
Ivy eventually finds her way to the edge of the woods where she encounters a large wall. After she climbs over the wall the final plot twist is revealed — the film is set in the present day (a newspaper in one scene has July 30th 2004 on it, the date of the film's release). A park ranger named Kevin, driving a Land Rover with the words "Walker Wildlife Preserve" on the side spots Ivy and is shocked to hear that she has come out of the woods. After hearing Ivy's last name is "Walker" he agrees to help her.
Once Ivy has the medicine she is looking for, she returns to the village. This sequence is intercut with brief segments showing the Elders opening their black boxes, which are revealed to contain mementos from their lives in the outside world, including one or more items related to the traumatic events in their past.
Explanation of
the storyline
It is revealed that the village was actually founded some time
in the late 1970s, when Edward Walker, professor of American History at the University
of Pennsylvania, approached other people he met at a grief counseling clinic after
his father had been murdered in a violent crime. He asked them if they wished
to join him in "an idea" he had. From this apparently grew "the
village", a secluded town in the middle of a wildlife preserve purchased
with Edward's dead father's fortune, a place where they would be protected from
any aspect of the outside world, even airplanes (Kevin's superior, who can briefly
be seen in a reflection as being Shyamalan himself, puts forward the information
that the government is bribed to keep the entire wildlife preserve a "no-fly-zone").
Once the village was created, it appears the original "elders" rolled
the clock back to what they thought was a simpler, more peaceful time.
Production
The
film was originally titled The Woods, but the name was changed because a film
directed by Lucky McKee, The Woods, already had that title. Like other Shyamalan
productions, this film had high levels of secrecy surrounding it, needed to protect
the expected twist ending that was a known Shyamalan trademark. Despite that,
the script written by Shyamalan for this film was stolen over a year before the
film was released, prompting many "pre-reviews" of the film on several
Internet film sites and much fan speculation about plot details. Most of the movie
was filmed in several fields south of Chadds Ford Pennsylvania, following Shymalan’s
predilection for staging his plots and filming his movies in or near Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. The village seen in the film was built in its entirety in one field.
Another field contained an on location temporary sound stage. Production on the
film started in October of 2003 with delays because some scenes needing fall foliage
could not be shot because of a late fall season. Principal photography was wrapped
up in mid December of that year. In April/May of 2004 several of the lead actors
were called back to the set. Reports noted that this seemed to have something
to do with a change to the films ending, and in fact the film's final ending differs
from the ending in the script stolen a year earlier.
"Those We Don't Speak Of" are fictional characters in M. Night Shyamalan's (2004) film The Village. They are red-cloaked, piglike, intelligent, and apparently violent. The creatures lie at the very core of a system of beliefs that govern the lives of a small group of settlers in rural Pennsylvania. Village lore has it that a truce with the creatures ensures that the humans will not enter the woods and "Those We Don't Speak Of" will not enter the valley where the settlement is located.
Actor
Role
Bryce Dallas Howard Ivy Elizabeth Walker
Joaquin Phoenix Lucius Hunt
Adrien Brody Noah Percy
William Hurt Edward Walker
Sigourney Weaver
Alice Hunt
Brendan Gleeson August Nicholson
Cherry Jones Mrs. Clack
Celia
Weston Vivian Percy
John Christopher Jones Robert Percy
Frank Collison
Victor
Jayne Atkinson Tabitha Walker
Judy Greer Kitty Walker
Fran
Kranz Christop Crane
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