The Village: a lesson in morals and fears (spoiler)

Rating: 8/10 (10 July 2005)

I think there were two lessons M. Night Shyamalan (cool name, by the way!) was trying to t/preach: People won't know what they don't want to know and look around you at the world today. There were no monsters. Only people. That was what they really feared all along, right? People. Someone pointed out the fact that not all the people in the Village looked young enough to be offspring of the Elders. In reality, I guess they just couldn't find enough actors young enough to look like kids or grandkids of the not-so-old-looking Elders. If you look at it from a philosophical standpoint, which I do, you can explain it like this: Maybe the Elders weren't the only ones to first settle in the Village. They all lost someone, right? The others could have gone through similar experiences as the Elders and made the same decision, to go to the Village. There they maybe, over time, forgot their other lives, and that there was any outside world at all. They didn't want to remember it, at least. Eventually they could even have convinced themselves that the "creatures in the woods" were real, as people will believe what they want to believe and can thus delude themselves into solidifying their fears into real, physical form, and a real, substantial reason for keeping inside the Village forever. The later generations would have nothing to say to the contrary of the established beliefs, not remembering any other kind of life. If they're aware of the logic flaws in their little Village, maybe they like to keep them quiet and live in this kind of delusion. They all suffered at the hands of the world, somehow, and they decided they'd rather be completely isolated from it than continue to belong to it. So they built this kind of utopia in the middle of nowhere, unreachable by most of the population, their main goal being to "preserve innocence," as Walker says in his long, corny speech in the movie. And to keep the truth about the creatures quiet. They think the world has become too evil and, WORLDLY in general, and the only way to keep things pure is to go rustic, back to the simple ways of 1897, somehow missing the obvious fact that the world was just as worldly, men just as greedy, back then. Why don't we just go back to the ways of the cavemen, because then we'd be really pure? Also, when M. Night makes his cameo as he always does, as the head park ranger guy reading the newspaper whose reflection you see pretty obviously in the cabinet glass, he's listening to the radio and it's talking about how some people were killed or something, some bomb explosion, and the newspaper says that some other little girl got murdered, etc. It was pretty much staring you in the face, the moral lesson there. Can you be more subtle?
Speaking of that too-long speech, one of the Elders (Noah's father, I think) said that "heartache is the same everywhere." He also said to Lucius near the beginning, if you remember, something like, "Sorrow follows you wherever you go. There's no hiding from it," and looked at the box in the corner where they kept their "dark secrets." I think he understands that you can never really escape from sadness and that the idea of the Village itself is a sham. And speaking of Noah's father, I think Noah knew all along that the creatures were fake. I think he was the one who killed the dogs, too. If he didn't have much trouble killing Lucius, whom he seemed to have had some fondness for, I don't see that he would have had any problem skinning a few dogs. As a kind of sick prank. Walker said one of the Elders might have done it, but it seems unlikely; they couldn't have gained much by it, and none of them seemed like the dog-murdering type. Also, when the Elders go into the "quiet room" and discover he's gone and the floorboards dug up, one of them cries out, "Oh...the animals!" And if you remember, Noah always used to laugh at public gatherings, etc., when people thought the creatures were around, as if sharing some sort of funny secret with himself. You thought at first it was just because he was the village idiot and all and didn't understand the implications, when he was laughing delightedly and going, "They're coming! They're coming!," but it was still a bit suspicious. He could have discovered the costume beneath the floorboards or gone into the "forbidden storage shed" long ago, and so found it funny that other people were scared of the monsters. Sometimes things just work out that way, that the village idiot knows the truth when all the rest are deluded... Also, it was clear he'd gone into the woods before, to fetch the "bad-colored" berries and whatnot, so maybe he made a habit of dancing around in the woods in his creature costume.
Anyway, the film is good and rather simple (everything moves in one direction and I felt the message was pretty straightforward), as well as a little thought-provoking. Although there is not much action, it's entertaining enough, and I liked the setting. I also found the monsters to be a little creepy, even though they looked fake and moved clumsily; I can't explain it, exactly, but they are eerie.