Skip to main content

The Village (2004)

Manoj Night Shyamalan's The Village can't be called a disaster as many critics would like to call it.
The Village is an innocent film. The film or the plot is in no way outstanding. But the storyteller in Shyamalan tells this less than spectacular tale with his trademark style. M. Night Shyamalan is one of the very few directors who works on the mood of the subject at hand. The Village is wafer thin in its plot and at times weird in its dialogues, but then it is filled with secrets and more secrets! In a line, it is a tale of an isolated village confronting an astonishing truth that lies just outside its borders. The terrific visuals of the village also tells one beautiful love story in the middle of its creepy atmosphere.
Adrien Brody, newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, and William Hurt give fighting performance to pass the fear and scare that lie in the mysterious woods. The cast looks refreshingly different from other Hollywood movies and it seemed to me for the good.
Of the many flaws, the slow pace at which it moves is sure test the patience of some. The lack of development in its plot also tampers the thrill of many. Also, the twist ending of the Village is not a shocker and the expectation of a shocking surprise could disappoint a large number of viewers.
Yet, I feel that this village does have a good heart.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Nidra

I haven't seen the original version of the film, Nidra, which was directed by Bharathan. But the version his son, Sidharth Bharathan, made was lovable for the way it was made. Nidra is a neat film. It has a writing material well adapted by Sidharth and Santhosh. The dialogues from Santhosh Echikkanam are bang on! Loved the visuals of the film as well but it seemed to have an excess of blue all over it. I wonder if Sameer Thahir did that to cover up for the excess of white that he might have had to  accommodate while shooting on the Red camera. The music and background score of the film sounded well with the film. The editing and sound design were no less good. It did feel as though there where a couple of instances when the footages jumped creating a disturbance for a second or two. But, otherwise the editing by Bavan Sreekumar was just too good. I loved the editing on all those scenes that featured the redish look from Sameer and the scene at the dining table that featur...

Green Street Days

Green Street Hooligans is a 2005 English film directed by Lexi Alexander and Bangalore Days is a 2014 Malayalam film directed by Anjali Menon. Both the film may not share much in common in the outside but they do have their own share of strange similarities. Green Street Hooligans and Bangalore Days have a plot point that is very similar in idea. No, this is not the strange similarity that I'm trying to talk about. Green Street narrates a story about football hooliganism and Bangalore Days a story about three cousins. Yes, these are actually very different ideas and obviously not 'strange' similarity! Both these films are directed by female filmmakers. In fact, both these films are the second feature length films directed by each. It's interesting to note that the themes these films deal with aren't exactly the kind that is expected of them. Green Street is a very violent film. It's a crime film on the backdrop of sports. And Bangalore days is meant to be...

Kaminey

Vishal Bharadwaj's Kaminey is a classic film targeted at the masses. Vishal Bharadwaj could be a genius. He has handled a movie that could turn out to be a total mess at some other guys hand with great brilliance. He has not only managed to execute the film in style but also taken care of the music, screenplay and dialogues of the film. The plot of Kaminey is simple. The construction of the plot is where Vishal and his team has made the magic. As in a Guy Ritchie film here we travel with one character and then at a point slide over to another. The action as in a Quentin Tarantino movie is gonna come hitting at you as hard as you have ever imagined a Bollywood cinema to be (and the better thing here is that you have very less blood compared to QT)! What makes Kaminey have the class is the the fact that it is truely cinematic. Kaminey is a true film and not a hindi film. Vishal Bharadwaj has been able to communicate with his film very universally with the brilliant dark visual t...