Virtue without courage

Rating: 10/10 (22 October 2006)

Seldom do I wake up in the middle of the night and think about a movie. When I do, I buy that movie. I then ask myself why the film penetrated my imagination so completely and then set out to study every camera angle, every piece of dialogue, every character until I understand. Naturally, this is a time-intensive process but, thankfully, only a handful of movies have affected me like The Village has. I adore almost every aspect of this film; However, I wish to comment on one element that had great impact on me: M. Night made me want to live at Covington. The simplicity, the community, the peculiar but polite speech, the seeming virtue of the place caused a yearning within me. I wanted to be there. But after the second, third and subsequent viewings, I began to question my desire. Covington was a place of traditional values, where men were gentlemen and women were ladies, democracy mixed harmoniously with authority, a place aloof from crime and corruption and danger (somewhat). But in avoiding danger I believe the fictional town sealed its own demise: For all their apparent virtues, the citizens of Covington lacked courage. With the exception of Ivy and Lucius, the population had the moral stature of sheep. The children were taught to fear and to hide. The very foundation of the town was based on running away from problems instead of facing them. As C.S. Lewis once pointed out, "...courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point... A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions." The tragedy of The Village, in my mind, is the degradation of that moral conviction called courage that, unfortunately, negates all the intended good that the founders of Covington sought to create.