A Unique Film of Beauty and Mystery

Rating: 7/10 (6 April 2013)

Released in 2004, "The Village" is not a horror film; it's a romantic mystery. Not a 'mystery' in the sense of a murder mystery, but rather all-around mysterious. It's a "What if...?" tale. The set-up presents the viewer with a slew of questions, which are all answered in the final act. The fun of the film is to see if you can figure out the answers before they are revealed, but that's not the only reason to appreciate it.
THE PLOT: A small village in Eastern Pennsylvania in 1897 is surrounded by foreboding woods that harbor mysterious creatures. The villagers are pretty much imprisoned in the hamlet. Something happens that prompts a young blind woman to risk a journey through the dangerous woods to find medicines in another town.
Ron Howard's daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard, stars as the innocent blind protagonist while Joanquin Phoenix plays her strong-and-silent loved one. Adrien Brody is effective as the detestable village idiot. Also on hand are Sigourney Weaver and William Hurt as the town elders, who know more about the situation than they let on.
Director & writer M. Night Shyamalan portrays the locations with an aura of beauty and mystery. On top of this the score is fittingly haunting and beautiful. As such, the film is a feast for the eyes and ears.
There's one potent scene I must mention *** minor spoiler***: Near the end, the blind girl finally encounters a person from the outer towns. The contrast of the innocent, secluded blind girl and the outsider is well captured. The outsider questions the mysterious girl but ultimately discerns that she is genuine. This is an extraordinary scene -- ranking up there with the all-time best in cinema (much like the mysterious Native American bar sequence in "Wolfen").
Although the end-revelation in Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense" was outstanding and arguably better than the the one in "The Village", I personally prefer "The Village" overall. Bottom Line: If you have a taste for surreal mystery and rustic beauty, don't miss out on "The Village." It's a moving, one-of-a-kind picture.
GRADE: B+ or A-
***EXTREME SPOILER ALERT*** Do not read further if you haven't seen the film.
There are two main mysteries: (1.) The nature of the creatures in the woods, and (2.) the reality of the village itself. The truth about the "creatures" may be discerned by some viewers before it is revealed, but, I gotta admit, my wife and I didn't figure it out (and she's good at predicting story elements). As to the second mystery: There's no way a viewer could figure this enigma out as long as s/he accepts that the story takes place in 1897, which both the film and the DVD jacket indicate. The only way you could unravel this puzzle is by considering the possibility that it does not take place in 1897. My Wife and I never considered this possibility (after all, why would they lie?) and so were unable to discern the truth.
Beyond all that, the film has a potent subtext. It's an allegorical slam against socialism in general and, in particular, that humanity-destroying socialist experiment known as Sweden. Its title is a riff on Hilary Clinton's socialist polemic "It takes a village (to raise a child)." Shyamalan shows the deadly consequence of entrusting the care of our children to the socialist state. The movie opens with the village's burial of a young child and begins the final act with the death of a product of village upbringing: a dim-witted, craven murderer.
The movie focuses on the sad fate of the young adults who manage to survive their socialist upraising while retaining a remnant of hope for a better future. The pure-hearted and intelligent Ivy is ultimately seduced by power and welcomed into the inner-circle of village leaders where she will promote the utopian lie of peace within the community and chaos outside, meanwhile continuing to bury the young and execute the useless. Her love interest, the obedient Lucius, is unfit for the inner circle but will be useful as a goon-enforcer for the village as he carries on the Elders' practice of terrorizing its own citizenry in the guise of forest monsters.
As with Sweden, the village is dependant on Western capital. Its appearance of self-sufficiency is a facade. It was built with, survives on and is protected by the wealth of capitalists. This can't last forever, of course. As Margaret Thatcher put it, the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.