August 3, 2004

Did you hear that pin drop?

The entertainment journalist's need to recycle revved up a little early this year. There is virtually no news out there. People are so bored that they are making crap up about Eric Bana… Eric BANA!

My guess is that Kirk Kerkorian & Co. are waiting to see if Sony can come up with $5 billion in cash from its partners before taking a Time-Warner deal for $4 billion or less all in stock. The DreamWorks Animation IPO is not a news story until the week it launches. Disney is having a nightmare year at the box office, but the rumbling around Eisner has been reduced by nature to a dull roar. Chernin finally did sign his contract at Fox. Universal's Summer of Hell ended with Bourne. Beating up on Paramount is boring and still just too easy. Spider-Man did what he needed to do for Columbia. Warner Bros. made a good choice with Bryan Singer and Superman, which overshadowed the ugly clawing of Catwoman (which will gross much more than it deserves). Valenti's taking his victory lap. Neither Tom Cruise or Nicole Kidman seems to have a steady worth writing about. Lindsay Lohan finally put the plastic pillows out of sight. That Olsen girl finally ate a sandwich, even though New York Minute made everyone else throw lunch up. And all the violent celebrity sex in court is at least six months old. (Britney Spears servicing her boyfriend on a balcony has all the surprise of the so-last-year's-cancer-threat Brown Bunny doing an oral sex billboard on the Sunset Strip.)

Things are so boring that the mainstream press is obsessing on Comic-Con and the geeks of the world.

Meanwhile, some website somewhere is making a fuss over my seven month old review of Garden State and I am getting some nasty mail. Hey… you being bored doesn't make that film any better. Maybe a second look for me will. But until then, I stand by my review.

Tomorrow, I'm going to do a follow-up Oscar column at MCN along with a profile of the first director to make a real L.A. awards splash, Walter Salles. But it has to wait for tomorrow… I'm rationing stuff out!

READER OF THE DAY: I have taken the liberty of removing the few actual spoilers in the e-mail from THE DRUGGIST: "Day late and dollar short, I know, but I wanted to see The Village and then read your spoiler section, and then respond.

As for your Village review, I want to dig deeper. From a bird's eye view, this is another Shyamalan 'gimmick' as you put it -- a twist movie that spends all its energy ensuring that the audience is surprised at the end, and having fulfilled its duty, ends thusly. I find that analysis to be one-dimensional at best, and at worst a cheap trick to let a review like A.O.
Scott's in the Times run around with little or nothing to say of the film.

The Village is one of the most patient, heartfelt and passionate movies I've seen this year. The score, including the brilliantly poignant violin solos throughout the movie, is magnificent and (as you said) the look of the film is beautiful. Though I've never been an avid fan of Joaquin Phoenix (and have no education in which to accurately analyze his performance) I found his work here to perfectly reflect the larger themes of the film - strong passions yearning to explode, but being forcibly muted and suppressed instead.

Like the Elders of the Village in which he lives, Lucius (Phoenix's character) hides away from the emotion that threatens to overwhelm him. In one of the many exquisite scenes throughout the movie, Lucius describes his love for Ivy Walker as the dawn breaks behind them. It is a turning point for the movie, as the wall of emotion that the Elders have built up around them begins to come crashing down, culminating with Elder Walker's speech to the Elders concerning Ivy's departure. "The world kneels before love in awe," he says, expressing the dream of the Elders.

Interestingly, it is my contention that the thesis of the movie lies within that same scene. August Nicholson, played by Brendan Gleeson, says (and I have to paraphrase as best I can here), "You all know why it is that I came to this Village, and in that time I have buried the rest of my family. Life is suffering." The world can be a cruel, heartless place in which inequity thrives and true love fails. No one can escape the specter of Death, nor the evil deeds that lie in some men's hearts.

Concerning Ivy Walker, the most memorable and well realized performance of the movie, I find it ironic that she and her sister (along with their Father in the speech I mentioned above) alone channel the emotion of love, yet it is the blind sister that sees rightly. Each is so sure in the way they see the world, it is not surprising that Walker's children are truly innocent -- he would want nothing else. Surrounding these characters throughout the movie is the theme of suppression, mostly of emotion -- the locked boxes in the Elders' houses hiding memories away, the "Quiet room" where Noah screams when he is locked in, Lucius' character in general. It is only Ivy, blind to the world as she is, that can both see love (the auras around her father and Lucius) and fully express her love (both in her words and actions). Innocence alone is not enough to see the world as it truly is .. to see into the hearts of men is to be blind to all else. Lucius and Noah (Adrien Brody's character ) express emotions as well, though each in his flawed manner -- Lucius
representing willful suppression and Noah representing chaos and madness incarnate .. the flaws of the world writ small.

Taken as a horror or suspense thriller alone, this movie is very pretty and occasionally exciting. Taken as a love story, it is mesmerizing thanks to the performance of Bryce Dallas Howard, but ultimately rather banal. However, when taken for what it is, a movie with depth, a movie with something to say that is actually worth listening to, it is a fully realized masterpiece. I will be the first to admit it has its weaknesses (I would personally give it 3 1/2 stars out of a possible 4), but to simply describe it as a Shyamalan gimmick and move on is not to give it its due. This movie has something to say, and rather than beat you over the head with it, it opens your mind to its themes and ideas and then lets you explore them, in a way just as Ivy explores the Woods. In the most ironic twist of all, it seems many people, reviewers and public alike, are more blind than she.

Of course that's just my opinion ... I could be wrong. (c) Dennis Miller

What do you think?"

E ME: Well… what do you think?