pauraque_bk | The Village, etc.

appleviking drew Peter/Ron for me! It's PG-13, and it's here. w00t!

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malograntum and I went to see The Village last night. I'm a great fan of Shyamalan -- he's like that fic writer you'll follow into any pairing, even if you can't imagine how it could work -- so although I knew this effort had received mixed reviews, my hopes were high.

As Mal put it, this premise would have worked as a Twilight Zone episode. Unfortunately, for me, it did not work as a movie. It's strikingly pretty and well-acted, and it often seems that things are happening, but it actually turns out that essentially nothing happens in the course of the story.

Ivy is an appealing character, but the wrong character for us to identify with, because she doesn't really end up learning anything. She's told that the monsters aren't real... but then shortly encounters one, or what she thinks is one, and I think the implication is that she's as much a victim of the elders' cover-up as everyone else -- as always, she's blind. She isn't present for the conversation where they decide to continue pretending the creatures were real. At the end of the movie, nothing has changed, except that we the audience know the secret. The story takes place entirely in the viewer's head.

This material could be engaging if seen from the point of view of one of the elders, because that's where the conflict really lies. There's no real reason for the elders to talk funny, or to pretend it's the 1800s (as the tombstone shows that they do) -- their children wouldn't know the difference -- it's all for the elders' benefit, to help them stay in-character. That's interesting, but Shyamalan makes it tangential.

I kept looking for some sort of allegory to make the story more meaningful, but I didn't really hit on anything that worked. Early on, I thought it resembled an allegory of the interaction between American animals and European humans... animals pressured to live in ever-shrinking territories, fearful of creatures they don't understand... Of course, that turned out not to be the case.

I was also somewhat distracted by the inevitable comparisons to Shyamalan's other movies -- the symbolism of red, as in The Sixth Sense... and the odd way the creatures were presented, visually, reminded me strongly of Signs. That probably wouldn't have been a problem if The Village itself had worked better.

We ended up talking about this in terms of fanfic. Some fics have a plot where something happens and changes, and some fics (usually drabbles) just exist to express a cool concept, and give the reader a jolt of horror, or laughter, or whatever. The latter is a story type that can't be sustained for very long, by its nature, and if it is carried on beyond the length of a ficlet, the surprise had better be REALLY cool. The Village either needed a more impressive premise, or it needed for more to happen and change as a result of the premise.

In a nutshell: Can't recommend it. It's gorgeous, though, and fails in an interesting way (as is usually the case when good writers fail). Anyone else see it?

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Sadly, I had to cut the evening short in the midst of interesting discussion, because I'd randomly started to feel sick. I kept thinking I'd feel better in a minute, okay the next minute, okay the next... bah. I threw up after

malograntum left, but still had a headache, so I went to bed. Slept for about twelve hours, and dreamed that the white flowers on the dining room table had turned to dry twigs, and my mom was cleaning them up. I told her I'd watered them, and I was surprised they'd died. She wasn't angry, and said she was surprised they'd lasted so long.

Then other things happened, and later on I was in a movie theater, maybe at the GoF movie, and leaning against my mom's shoulder. I realized then that it had to be a dream, and in my dream-stupid way, was impressed by how realistic it was -- her warmth, the bright film light between the seats in front of me.

I woke up and fed the cat, and then thought I'd go back to bed just for a few minutes. Turned out to be a few hours. I must have been more tired than I could possibly have realized.