Self-Indulgence
So, quite by accident, I watched another M. Night Shyamalan movie, "The Village". I'd heard rumors about this movie, but thought at first that maybe they were exaggerated; the opening of the movie had a bunch of quick scene changes, which might seem jumpy to some (a couple people told me it felt really disjointed.) But I kind of liked it, even if the dialogue was a little stilted. It was a quick way to fill you in on the backstory of what's going on.
But as the movie wore on (and wear it did,) the stilted dialogue and ridiculous blocking became much more annoying. I don't know why Shyamalan love to set up shots of the back of people's heads, or long shots of people having intimate dialogue. But more importantly, "The Village" is one of those dumb mysteries that depends on keeping the audience in the dark, rather than the characters. That's not really a mystery; it requires characters to speak to each other in weird ways that hides information they all know, but we don't. A real mystery is about a character discovering the truth, which sometimes the audience discovers well in advance; the tension comes from our wondering when the character will find the truth, and how the character will deal with that.
In "The Village", there's only one moment where a character discovers a truth that the rest of the characters know, and that moment of discovery is artificially shifted to be revealed later... and the character never discovers the full truth. The movie does not care if the character ever learns the full truth. It's all meant as a rather stupid allegory.
So, the movie looked promising (very un-Shyamalanian) at the beginning, but quickly rose to disappoint me.
But as the movie wore on (and wear it did,) the stilted dialogue and ridiculous blocking became much more annoying. I don't know why Shyamalan love to set up shots of the back of people's heads, or long shots of people having intimate dialogue. But more importantly, "The Village" is one of those dumb mysteries that depends on keeping the audience in the dark, rather than the characters. That's not really a mystery; it requires characters to speak to each other in weird ways that hides information they all know, but we don't. A real mystery is about a character discovering the truth, which sometimes the audience discovers well in advance; the tension comes from our wondering when the character will find the truth, and how the character will deal with that.
In "The Village", there's only one moment where a character discovers a truth that the rest of the characters know, and that moment of discovery is artificially shifted to be revealed later... and the character never discovers the full truth. The movie does not care if the character ever learns the full truth. It's all meant as a rather stupid allegory.
So, the movie looked promising (very un-Shyamalanian) at the beginning, but quickly rose to disappoint me.