...Methods of an auteur? The modern master of the clean, classy style of suspense filmmaking, M. Night Shyamalan, uses “traditional” genre thrills like ghost stories, comic book heroes, and monsters as the basis of his plots, yet giving only glimpses of the supernatural to capture and manipulate audiences’ emotions. He succeeds in applying suspense in his films without using excessive explicit content, rather focusing on the interpersonal relationships that allow the events to unfold. To accompany his style, Shyamalan applies a number of principles to each film. For example, he keeps his pacing deliberately slow. His famous films The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and The Village all contain slow, but emotional dialogue exchanges. The movies are more about dramatic scenes, not action scenes. This allows Shyamalan to explore character dynamics over plot dynamics, but at the same time, he is still able to keep the audience involved. When it comes to the supernatural ghosts and monsters, people are used to seeing action-packed scenes, all up-in-your-face experiences. Shyamalan goes a different way. He slowly builds up audiences’ anticipation, and then he reveals the truth. Like the way Cole reveals his secret in the hospital bed in The Sixth Sense; the way David accepts his powers in Unbreakable; the way the secret of Covington woods and its monster reveals. Audiences did not get the sensation of being scared out of their seat by the sudden spooks, nevertheless, they got the fulfillment...
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...View of Communication in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village I. Introduction M. Night Shyamalan’s film The Village offers an exemplary case study for recognizing how the Ritual View of Communication helps us understand how communication and exchange of knowledge shape society and its peoples’ understanding of reality. The Village’s reality is shaped and maintained by the social structure established by the village’s “elders.” They aim to perpetuate the society that they have founded and are willing to falsify a world where monstrous creatures lurk on their community’s borders to uphold their community’s “story” against possible change and save their desired way of life. II. A Brief Explanation of the Ritual View of Communication The Ritual View of Communication describes communication as, “a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired and transformed.” Communication helps to define reality by allowing individuals to share experiences in a context that has comprehensible meaning to everyone involved. By exchanging experiences, and ideas society is given a way to define and regulate their own realities by allowing the interpretations of these concepts to either concrete their own beliefs or transform them. These exchanges help, not only individuals create their own “story”, but in terms of this essay’s argument, a community’s story. III. Application of Ritual View of Communication to The Village The community of The Village, lives in a world, a reality...
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...THE VILLAGE (2004) PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES: Ethics, Consequentalism, Logic CHARACTERS: Ivey Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard, blind heroine), Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix, Ivey’s intended), Noah Percy (Adrien Brody, mentally impaired friend of Ivey and Lucius), Mr. Walker (William Hurt, father of Ivey and the village’s leading elder), Ms. Hunt (Sigourney Weaver, Lucius’s mother and another elder) OTHER FILMS BY DIRECTOR M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN: Signs (2002), Unbreakable (2000), Stuart Little (1999), The Sixth Sense (1999) SYNOPSIS: The film appears to be set in an early American society that is ruled by a group of elders that is comprised of both men and women. Scenes depicting youthful dalliance, communal intimacy, and a wedding of two of the young colonials give the village a utopian feel. However, the village is haunted by the death of its own members to disease and the fear of creatures that inhabit the woods outside the village. The colonials refer to these creatures as “those we do not speak of,” and the villagers have negotiated a deal with the creatures that neither will venture into the other’s territory. Lucius Hunt wishes to go to the neighboring towns to seek medicine that would improve the village’s well-being. He believes that his good intentions will spare him the wrath of the creatures, but the elders refuse to grant him permission. After Lucius becomes engaged to Ivey Walker, Noah Percy stabs him out of jealousy. As his condition worsens, Mr. Walker decides...
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