CAUTION! SPOILERS APLENTY!
“The Village” is a comment on the very nature of suspense. You’ve heard the old adage that seeing the monster is never as scary as waiting to see the monster. The idea is scarier than the real thing. “Alien” knew that and denied us a good look at the monster until just before the ending credits, “Aliens” put off the inevitable all-out battle between man and beast for over an hour, “Jaws” doesn’t let us see the shark for over an hour, etc. This is why horror sequels seldom work—we’ve seen the monster—and why movies that show us the the monster again and again seldom work either. “The Village” is all idea and no monster at all.
The crime of the elders began with the assumption “everyone would be happy if they just lived the way we want them to live” and the question “but how do we get them to live that way?” Matt Cale of Ruthless Reviews (explicit language) puts the way they want to live quite succinctly in his review of “The Village:”
Given that we live in a culture where so many various groups are seeking to escape modernity and carve out “paradise,” the subject is ripe for investigation. What about these home-schooling parents who seek to shelter their children from all dangers, both real and perceived? What about the simplicity movement, now largely forgotten, that asked burnt out go-getters to take up life in the country? Even our reality shows speak to a buried longing to cast off the cares of everyday life. We want adventure and excitement, but seem to want such things without having to work, risk death in traffic, or face the stress of crime, anger, and heartless competition.
There is, in every culture in every time in history, those who long to return to a largely imaginary time known as “the good old days.” Shyamalan shows these people as well-intentioned and utterly ridiculous; they find out just how crappy the “good old days” are. We are not meant to take “The Village” or the elders literally, but satirically, as the ad absurdum step of longing for “the good old days.” Look at everyone who keeps talking about “the good old days,” Shyamalan is snickering, they mean well, but aren’t they silly? I even forgive the movie’s mawkish interludes; the two beautiful, red-haired, and spunky daughters seem exactly like what the elders want except, oops, one’s blind. Everything that’s semi-wholesome and semi-serious seems to be some part of this “good old days” mentality turned on its head.
The answer for the elders is to keep everyone in line, and therefore drearily happy, through fear. So they invent the monsters. Again, it makes satirical sense, not literal. If the idea of Covington Woods is too blow the “good old days” mentality into a wild exaggeration, then the village itself is a reverse satirical method, which is shrinking things down into a microcosmos. The intentions of the elders are not all that bad—that’s why they are mostly portrayed sympathetically—but their methods are evil. Some reviews I’ve read have mistakenly assumed that Shyamalan’s sympathetic treatment of the elders means that he admires what they’ve done. Nothing could be farther from the truth; because of their warped decisions, their children are dying young and crime, which they thought they could flee, has found them at last. The elders’ final decision to stick with their sick experiment is not an admiration, but cynicism.
Maybe it’s because I saw “Fahrenheit 9/11” recently, but “The Village” could be seen as a critique of fascism. “Everyone will be happy if we just live a certain way, everyone will be happy if they’ll believe us when we tell them we’re happy,” the elders say, “so let us convince them we are under attack; people always get along and unite against a common enemy.” Like “The Truman Show,” everyone will be content in his place if we are all convinced the outside world is deadly and murderous. Our homes will look a lot better if we’re convinced murderers are on the prowl everywhere. The death of the village idiot gives credence to the lies of the elders. “Because your son died, our stories have become true.” How’s this for creepy? The parents of fallen soldiers seldom consider for a second that their children died for a false cause. Instead, they become the strongest supporters, and everyone who doesn’t want to appear callous and ungrateful becomes a supporter as well. Because their children have died, the stories become true. (Peter Travers refers to Those Of Whom We Do Not Speak as “creatures of mass destruction.”) And isn’t there some prominent politician now whose middle name is Walker? Doesn’t he have two college-aged daughters, kind of like the dude in this movie?
Tenuous, perhaps, but when we finally leave the village, what do we find? We find the director reading a newspaper comprised entirely of murder and rape and listening to a radio news program comprised entirely of bombings and death. Outside the village is just another village where we are kept in line by more stories of fear and danger. Literary attacks on fascism were a big thing in the middle of the last century, which is why I kept getting “Lord of the Flies” and “1984” vibes.
To return briefly to Matt Cale and Ruthless Reviews:
Had the film taken this group of adults (referred to in the film as “elders”) and explored their lives, motivations, and psychologies more fully, it could have been both bitingly humorous and remarkably insightful. Instead, we learn absolutely nothing about these people save a few brief words near the end about losing loved ones to tragedy and getting together at group counseling. Instead of much-needed shots at American restlessness and the usually twisted search for an imaginary innocence, we are led to believe from the very beginning that the lies fed to the children are in fact true… if we had known all along that the adults were living a horrible lie, the drama would be heightened because we’d wonder if and when the ruse would come to an end. We’d share the worried looks of the elders as kids grew to maturity and started questioning the established order. We’d share the sense of panic as kids wandered too close to the trees, or caught their parents in a contradiction. Who would be the first kid to make a run for it? Would a group of kids conspire to look for clues as to who's really behind the creature sightings? Even better, what would the kids say once they found out that another, more modern world beckons? Perhaps then we’d get more discussion about the ethics involved in systematically lying to one's children day after day, even if based on good intentions. A host of exciting issues results from this approach… At bottom, this should be a film about horrible, selfish people stealing the minds and futures of their children, but instead we are left with a scavenger hunt.
Page one of "The Village."
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