Hah! I kind of have to since almost everyone this side of Mars has some idea of what it was going to be after a pirated copy of the screenplay was leaked onto the Internet a few months prior to the movie?s premiere. Then, within a week of the movie?s opening, anyone who cared to know about it knew about it.
So much for spoilers. Man, I should just blurt it out...
No!
I... can?t... No... spoilers...
Even... ones... that are... really... really... obvious...
Whew. That?s better.
The premise of The Village is that a group of people, living a reasonably good life in (what else?) a village, are actually scared spitless by monsters that supposedly surround them and keep them from leaving for any reason. The village?s elders work very hard to root the fear of these monsters in everyone?s daily lives and routines. However, Ivy, a blind girl (Bryce Dallas Howard), and Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix), a pretty fearless guy, begin to deviate from the elders' plans. So steeped in dark shadows that the film could have been called ?Dark Shadows,? Ivy and Lucius hide their love for one another until it can?t be contained any longer and they make known their plan to wed. Not long after their engagement is announced, things take a turn for the worse and Lucius is struck down and will die if medicine isn?t procured from the next town. After no one has the courage to make the journey, it?s up to Ivy to go.
What truth will she find in the trees beyond the Village?
If you somehow avoided reading that pirated screenplay and stayed away from the office water cooler where everyone was talking about the plot twist, and boycotted Webzines with spoilers, well, you should run right out and buy a copy of The Village.
And even if you already know what happens, the widescreen DVD release of The Village is worth the trouble because the extras are pretty darn extra special. First, there is a series of mini-featurettes (wow... I never thought the word featurette could be so trivialized. I mean, how long is a mini-featurette? Three seconds? Are there standards by which mini-featurettes are built, say, from the National Association of Mini-Featurette Producers? But I digress...) that take you through the making of The Village. By breaking the ?making of? feature into mini-featurettes (there?s that phrase again), you can control which you watch first, or supposing you?ve watched them all, which one(s) you return to for another look-see.
The mini-featurettes (yaaah!) include: ?Shooting The Village,? ?Casting,? ?Boot Camp,? Editing and Sound,? ?Scoring The Village,? and finally, ?Those We Don?t Speak Of.? Each has its own unique value within the whole.
The DVD also includes four deleted scenes, each introduced by Shyamalan with details about why it didn?t make the film?s final cut.
A full feature (no mini-featurette here) is devoted to ?Bryce?s Diary,? where Bryce Dallas Howard helps us see The Village through her eyes. Considering it was her first major feature film, and she hit the character so well, this audio-visual diary is a good watch.
The Village DVD also includes one of Shyamalan?s ?home movies,? a staple of previous DVD releases by this director. This time he is an Indiana Jones clone stealing an idol, but instead of being nearly crushed by a rolling stone, he?s chased by a dog. Amusing... Wait!! That?s a spoiler. Aargh! After I said no spoilers!!!
Extras are rounded out by a production photo gallery and trailers for other Disney/Touchstone releases.
If you are a fan of M. Night Shyamalan?s films, or like seeing Aliens? Ripley (with apologies to Sigourney Weaver) dressed like a refugee from ?The Little House on the Prairie,? you?ll want to smuggle this one into your collection.
However, if you:
- a) read the pirated script of The Village on the Internet,
b) succumbed to the temptation of the spoilers at the office water cooler,
c) weren?t steamrolled by William Hurt?s cool ?beard look,? or
d) wish that Shyamalan would cast someone other than Joaquin Phoenix in his films,
