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Stars:
Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, Bryce Dallas Howard, William Hurt, Sigourney
Weaver, and Brendan Gleeson
Writer:
M. Night Shyamalan
Director:
M. Night Shyamalan
Feature
length: 108 minutes
Extras:
Deconstructing The Village Documentary, Bryce’s Diary, M. Night’s Home
Movie, Deleted Scenes, Production Photo Gallery, Previews
Languages:
English and French Language Dolby Digital 5.1 EX Surround Sound
Subtitles:
English Captions and Closed Captions and French and Spanish Language Subtitles
Packaging:
Keep Case
Chapter
Stops: 24
Sound:
Dolby Digital 5.1 EX Surround Sound
Year
of Theatrical Release: 2004/DVD Release: 2005
Theatrical
Distributor: Touchstone Pictures
Home
Video Distributor: Touchstone Home Entertainment
MPAA
Rating: PG-13
Reviewer: Mark A. Rivera
Warning
– The Following DVD Review May
Contain Spoilers. If You Are Sensitive To This Sort Of Thing, Please Do Not Read
This DVD Review Of M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village: Vista Series:
Widescreen” Until After You Have Seen The Film For Yourself. Thank you.
Since
his breakthrough success with “The Sixth Sense” M. Night Shyamalan’s films
appears to have become a love it or hate it affair for general audiences who
also have come to expect some sort of surprise twist at the end of his stories.
This has placed Shyamalan in a somewhat difficult area since it is not easy to
consistently surprise audiences especially given the availability of spoilers on
the Internet as well as a general overall understanding or sophistication that
has developed in media viewers over the last several years. Personally I think
the availability of information is a double-edged sword of sorts depending on
what can or cannot be gathered for the user and the user’s intentions or use
of whatever information he or she may gather. However this is a risk that has
always existed and regardless of what may come from our twenty-first century
media driven society, the reality is you can’t turn your back and pretend
these things don’t exist and so like anything else in life, it seems with
good, we must also accept the consequences of something bad coming out of the
availability of information technology in all of it’s forms.
In
America and across the world there has been the consistent push to broaden the
boundaries of understanding in the name of science, dogma, and politics to just
name a few and at the same time there has been a push to bring things back to an
earlier time by these very same interest groups and more. To pretend certain
things do not exist and try to resurrect and or enforce an old mythology upon a
group of people because culturally a few think it is for the best is itself a
volatile situation. Yet the late mythology scholar Joseph Campbell stated that
the problem with modern society was that there was no new myth for the youth of
the nations to believe in and he even went further to state that a return to an
old myth would not necessarily reestablish an instruction that could help one
discern what kind of life they should lead. Thus much of the chaos that is
occurring around us today could be the result that not only can you expect
people to freely return to a simpler way of life after living in our
contemporary times, but if you do not establish some sort of myth that basically
gives a society some sense of what is right or wrong then young and older people
alike will either create their own myths or search for meaning in areas that
might ultimately prove destructive. This is a problem that I think has not only
had an impact on western society, but upon global society as a whole and yet who
is to say that one belief system is correct and another is wrong?
As
difficult as it is to accept, the question of what is right and wrong is so
extremely subjective that it truly is almost impossible to be certain except
perhaps for those very things that strike us on such a primal level that as a
species we should know by our gut that the actions we take will have
consequences that we either choose to embrace, avoid, or ignore. This in a
nutshell is what I think M. Night Shyamalan is trying to get across with his
most recent theatrical feature film “The Village.” Whether you take the
story literally or figuratively, essentially I think Shyamalan is not so much
asking us as viewers to judge the actions of the characters so much as to just
take in and view the village and the characters that exist in it as a microcosm
for the world we live in today and like his previous films “The Village” is
definitely worthy of repeat viewing because there is such a richness in the
texture of the story M. Night Shyamalan is telling us. That doesn’t mean that
you can’t just watch the movie at face value as an entertaining thriller and
leave it at that, but for those who choose to look deeper, there is something to
be pondered upon about the story as a whole. Enough in fact to write a thesis
paper on if one were academically inclined to do so. To go any further in my
opinion would be too much of a risk of diluting the viewing experience for
anyone regardless of whether or not they have seen the film so I am going to
skip the traditional movie synopsis or blurb and get onto the review of the DVD
itself.
Presented
in an anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) aspect ratio that preserves the manner in
which the film was exhibited theatrically for home video users, “The
Village” has a muted quality to it that emphasizes either a golden yellow tone
or a crimson red that just bleeds through the otherwise earth toned color
palette for dramatic reasons that will become clear for those who view the film
and in a certain sense, there is even an added dimension to the use of color in
“The Village” that could arguably open more intense scrutiny for film
scholars and so forth to ponder. Whether or not he has ever stated it, I think
M. Night Shyamalan purposely layers his films in a manner inspired by other
great film storytellers like Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, and lest we
forget Alfred Hitchcock. That is not to say that Shyamalan is trying to copy
these filmmakers or that he is even in the same league with them, but he is
definitely very talented and judging by his traditional home movie of some video
he made when he was kid, which he has once again done here for this DVD release
(3:06), it is obvious to see that at least he may have been inspired…
The
transfer is THX Certified complete with the THX Optimizer® program for proper
picture and sound modulation and overall I think the picture and sound quality
are both quite rich. An English as well as a French Language Dolby Digital 5.1
EX Surround Soundtrack are encoded onto the dual layered DVD as well as English
Captions and Closed Captions for the hearing impaired and French and Spanish
Language Subtitles as options. A full screen (1.33:1) DVD release is also
available, but sold separately. Though the interactive menus on the DVD will
give an approximate length for the majority of the extra value features included
on this DVD, I tend to prefer to go with the data my DVD player gives me instead
so please keep this in mind and understand that exact time measurements may vary
from player to player.
“Deconstructing
The Village” (25:09) is a six-part documentary that can also be viewed as
individual featurettes that covers in somewhat of a light fashion the
pre-production, casting, production, post-production, scoring, and creature
design for the film. “Bryce’s Diary”(4:59) is a narrated short where
Actress Bryce Dallas Howard shares a bit of her personal feelings regarding her
experience as a participant in the making of “The Village” from the initial
offer she received from M. Night Shyamalan to seeing the completed film for the
first time at a screening. Shyamalan also provides brief introductions for four
deleted scenes that can be viewed individually or as one reel. (11:03). A
production gallery that one can skip through manually or view as a slide show
concludes the extra value features directly related to the film. An insert
booklet detailing the disc’s contents is enclosed within the DVD keep case and
the interactive menus are well rendered and easy to navigate. While I understand
the need to market upcoming and available features from Buena Vista Pictures and
Buena Vista Home Entertainment, I would prefer a few less previews for other
films on a “Vista Series” title and instead the theatrical trailers and TV
spots for the film “The Village” should be given the priority since this is
being marketed as something other than the standard DVD-Video release to
consumers. Before the feature themed DVD menus appear, a reel of previews (6:51)
that includes a rather too innocuous teaser for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To
The Galaxy,” as well as DVD previews for “Ladder 49” and “Mr. 3000”
are played. These previews can be skipped over and accessed individually or as
one reel within the interactive menu choices and includes a bonus DVD-Video
preview for “National Treasure” (2:33).
“The
Village: Vista Series: Widescreen” is available now on DVD-Video at retailers
on and offline courtesy or Touchstone Home Entertainment.
©
Copyright 2005 By Mark A. Rivera
All Rights Reserved.
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