Metaphor of a culture of fear...

Rating: 6/10 (20 May 2005)

The year, 2004, how to create a lie, an alternate reality? One of the deleted scenes (from the DVD) includes a drill in which Walker (William Hurt) rings the alarm bell and everyone scatter back to their houses and hid underground. In the finished product, there is such a scene (not a drill) where a creature intrudes in the village and the same bell has everybody running to the basement. The scene is reminiscent of a 40s or 50s government drill (remember the black and white clips in which children jump under school desks and entire families gather into anti-nuclear shelters?) Another deleted scene has Noah's father his family about the murder of his brothers, blaming it on the creatures, then claims that this is not to frighten them, just to "inform you".
The theatrical version had already enough information for us to conclude that there is a negative nudge towards, not only the 50s, but also the present White House administration: the creation of fear, of an enemy, the blaming of another (the other) for your own mistakes, the elaboration of a propaganda campaign in order to submit a population to your agenda. Isn't't the forbidden color, red, is also reminiscent of communism.
The Village then reveals us that it was all a farce, a hoax created to keep the good citizens of the place into both ignorance and seclusion.
Two points here: One, the deleted scenes make the movie even more subversive, so I assume they have been discarded for a political reason. Secondly, how not to see the symbol of storytelling and "true story" as manipulative techniques of persuasion, to "inform" with lies. Actually, Walker says of Noah's death the "he made our story real." You do not need reality to make a story, just a credible series of facts that you connect accordingly with a made-up context. Remind you of anybody lately?
In a more aesthetic level, is the movie at the level of what you should expect of the director of The Sixth Sense? No, the "revelations" to Walker's daughter are laughable and anti-climatic at best. But it is unfair to compare with such an ingenious work of art.
Recommended.