The Village, released in 2004, is the fourth film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Starring Boyce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, William Hurt, Adrien Brody, and so on, this film observes the thrilling atmosphere that Shyamalan used to plot in his former works. However, when the first time I watched it, I kind of think that The Village is just a fabricated story made out of nothing, and when story proceeds to the end, I am not imprinted with any impressive image. This is an insipid story, and I somehow imagine that the actors might have difficulty in elaborating their characters in such an unimaginative fiction. Nevertheless, there still remains something regarding ethic for the audience to think about: do we have the right to unilaterally make our children isolated from society even though we think it is for the sake of their safety? And, are we sure that what we assume to be safe is really safe for our children?

Story Summary

Amid an expansive wild woods lies an isolated, autarky village composed of seven or eight families and guided by a committee comprises the families’ parents. This is a peaceful, happy, and coherent community: villagers grow plenty of produces for their own lives, Professor Edward Walker (by William Hurt) takes the responsibility of educating their young generations, and all of the persons in village respect and conform to the regulations ruled by committee. Indeed, this is a land of honey and milk—except for medicine, which causes Mr. Nicholson’s seven-year-old son to die. Consequently, young, silent, warm-hearted Lucius (by Joaquin Phoenix) pleads for admission of going to the nearest town to fetch medication. His request is rejected because there is a big red creature which will assault villagers should anyone step outside the hamlet’s borderline.

Edward’s eldest daughter Ivy (by Bryce Dallas Howard) is a beautiful, brilliant but blind young lady. She has a playmate Noah (by Adrien Brody), who is a mentally anthropogeny-retarded man and is ill in emotion management. Noah seems to have some special affection for Ivy, but she mistakes it for nothing but simple friendship; as a matter of fact, it is Lucius whom Ivy truly loves, so does he for her. When Noah knows that Lucius is going to marry Ivy, he stabs him badly. Severely injured by Noah, Lucius needs cures urgently or he will definitely perish, whereas the only one who dares to step on the way to the town is lying dying in bed. Ivy is now in despairing pain. Her father, having struggled with his conscience, finally illustrates his daughter the real image of the creature: it is a man-made figure created by the committee to daunt villagers to keep away from society. The parents have taken oaths not to let anyone leave the community because they don’t want their descendants get hurt like those unbearable miseries they have experienced in society before.

Encouraged by her father, Ivy firmly takes her way to the town, and, after going through various difficulties including the creature figure dressed by Noah who tries to frighten her from leaving, she climbs over the tall wall that surrounds and keeps the woods as wildlife preserve to reach a friendly officer. The officer helps her get the medicine and then sends her back to the woods. Knowing Lucius is going to be safe and everything remains status quo except Noah’s death, Edward declares that they are ready to regain their lives, which means the children will keep on living under fearfulness and being haunted by the big red creature.

 Theme

It is very difficult for me to perceive any meaningful theme in this film. I assume it might be just a mysterious and thrilling atmosphere that the director wants to elaborate, but even with this, the movie does not appear successful to cope. The story begins with a somber, sad and sorrowful funeral of a seven-year-old boy, then proceeds with a series of horrifying scenarios of skinned animal corpses and an unreal monster. When the story comes to the end, all the daunting phenomena turn out to be plotted by the parents, and they don’t intend to stop bewitching their children. Well, if a suspense yarn that closes with such an insane conclusion, I don’t think it can titillate those horror movie fans very much.

The reason that I say it is an insane conclusion is because there is no inspiring, dynamic or suspense image for the audience to picture when in the final scene the professor declares that Noah’s death makes the story of the creature real. It is predictable that similar scenarios will go over and over again in the village thereafter. This film shows nothing scary or haunting; those who are horrified are just the filial young generations. On the other hand, it triggers me to ponder the morality and feasibility of building a totally isolated community like this village, anyhow.

From the viewpoint of morality, the parents who construct this village once lived in towns and closely linked to society. It is various dreadful tragedies which happened to them that drive them to withdraw from society so that they and their own children won’t be hurt anymore. Their children, not knowing what have been agonizing their parents, are being appalled by a non-existent creature and horrible events fabricated by their parents, and the fear for creature prevents them from daring to think about leaving the village for towns. They thus lose the medicine they need for their illnesses and the opportunity they are entitled to choose the lives of their own; moreover, they don’t even know it is their parents who make them stay ignorant of the world just because the parents are not brave enough to face cruel reality. It is against human ethic that people do such a selfish thing on their descendants.

A village like the one in this story is bound to fade away based on the logics of biology and sociology. Sociologically, a village is always not an integral society and is inadequate in some resources. In this film, the village is desperately in need of medicine, but the villagers are not allowed to go to towns to get the supplies; this is the leak that will bring unrest to this community and ultimately cause it to collapse. One of the unrest derives from the leak is the unfairness that Ivy is encouraged to leave village to fetch cures for her lover while Mr. Nicholson’s seven-year-old son is left helplessly to die. As a consequence, I can visualize that Nicholson will definitely feel tortured once more by such injustice ever since he lost his intimate relative in society. It looks like that society is not crueler than the village to him; moreover, society can offer his son medical care but the village can’t.

Meanwhile, the science of biology has verified the lethal effect of inbreeding on a closed population that is not big enough. Inbreeding is the phenomenon that takes place in the offspring reproduced by parents with genes closely related to each other, and there is quite high possibility that inbreeding leads to phenotype defects of the offspring and results in recession and finally perishment of the offspring, and the population in turn. There are only eight families in the village, such a small population will come to the tragedy that all the descendants originate from a handful of chromosome sets; accordingly, inbreeding is inevitable if the parents don’t terminate their oath of isolation from society, which they stupidly don’t intend to.

In summary, The Village doesn’t reveal much appreciable meaning other than unnecessary thrilling and daunting scenes. However, this story accidentally reminds us anyhow that peoples have no right to block the ways for their descendants to have any connection with society even though society could be dangerous. 

Setting and tone

The story takes place in the autumn of late 1890s in a wildlife-preserve park located in Pennsylvania. The air smells gloomy, daunting and mysterious, so does the music sound. 

Plotting

The climax would be the scene that Professor Edward takes Ivy to a lodge and unveil the secret of the big red creature, which is a false monster manipulated by the committee. There is not any impressive foreshadow that hints the creature is unreal. The ending event and change is that Ivy knows there is nothing to fear for in the woods, and she steps determinedly on the way to the town to get medicine for Lucius.

Characterization

Ivy is the protagonist and a round character: Edward’s daughter, Lucius’ and Noah’s lover, and a blind woman; she is a dynamic character as well because she doesn’t think about leaving the town at first, then she goes into the woods without hesitation.

Edward is a round character: a father, a teacher and the leader of the committee; he is also a dynamic character, for he decides to break his oath to tell Ivy the truth of the creature.

Lucius is a round character: Noah’s friend and Ivy’s lover; he is also a static character and he doesn’t have significant change throughout the story.

Noah is a round character: an anthropogeny-retarded son, Ivy’s and Lucius’ friend and a killer; he is static as well.

Symbolization

The unreal creature is a product of cowardice in the parents’ minds. The parents, having been horrified by the cruelty of society, do not know how to deal with the aftermath of the tragedies happened to their dearest family members; all they can do is escaping from society. Moreover, because they don’t know how to cope with their fear, they do not know how to teach their children to manage difficulty as well; besides, they might also be shameful to let their children know their weaknesses. The creature is thus born by the complex of their pusillanimity.

Red is dubbed bad color by the villagers because the creature dresses in red. It therefore represents evil in children’s minds, and they try with efforts to get rid of it; however, from the audience’s viewpoint, red color in this story is more like knowledge which the parents don’t want their children to possess, and the children ignorantly and unconsciously discard as well.

The oath that the parents take not to leave the village is more like a curse that confines their hearts of freedom and wisdom. Because of the oath, Mr. Nicholson desperately watches his son die of illness without medicine. In addition, when Ivy gets back from the town with medicine and they could have chance of thinking about breaking the oath, they decide to draw back and submit to its bewitchment. The parents actually don’t have the advantage to regulate the oath; on the contrary, the oath, like a curse, has the villagers’ freedom in its hand.

Irony

Kind parents are harmful to their filial descendants.

A professor educates the young villagers with ignorance, intentionally.

Conflicts

The major conflict of person vs. person: Ivy vs. Noah, she thinks he is just one of her friend, but he thinks she is his lover.

The major conflict of person vs. society: Lucius vs. committee, he wants to go to the town to fetch medicine for villagers, but the committee won’t rejects his plead.

The major conflict of person vs. self: Edward decides to tell his daughter the truth of the big red creature.

Defects

The most obvious but evitable fault is the year of the story is set in 1890s. The year of the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Flaming was 1928, and before penicillin, humans did not have advancing medical science. In addition, the car that the officer drives is a jeep, which was not supposed to be there in that age; nor would be the aluminum ladder which the officer uses to help Ivy climb over the tall wall and back to the village.

The second defect is that the fifty- or sixty-more-year-old parents have adult children, but their children appear ignorant about their miseries in society.