THE VILLAGE: A Misunderstood Critique of the Upper Classes
Buena Vista PicturesAfter taking Hollywood by storm with a trifecta of ingeniously crafted genre mood pieces – namely The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs - M. Night Shyamalan was no longer ‘the one to watch’ but a genuine phenomenon. He was a golden egg-laying goose, the talk of the town and a darling among wide audiences, predominantly thanks to the way he was able to merge his own Hitchcockian and Spielbergian inspirations and use them to synthesize unforgettable cinematic experiences hinging upon their jaw-dropping final reveals.
Therefore, the release of his 2004 outing The Village was accompanied by a cresting tsunami of expectations which came crashing down onto the auteur’s career with its destructive momentum because – despite the fact the movie made money at the box office – neither the critics nor the audiences received it particularly well. It is important to ask why that might have been and compare the film to Shyamalan’s preceding works. After all, at least superficially, The Village was perfectly primed to tap into the same groove as The Sixth Sense or Signs with its brooding over-arching mystery, a pared-down human drama at the centre and a pivotal twist aiming to re-contextualize the narrative. But it did not work.
Audiences reacted to the film much the same way a cat would react to a slice of onion, which could be partially explained by the fact it was a bit easier to figure out what the central conceit was. Granted, matters were not helped at all by the fact an early draft of the screenplay was leaked online and allowed anyone who wished to find out what the central twist would be to seek it out with relative ease. As a result, it became abundantly clear that both audiences and critics were only interested in the machinations of the plot, the spectacle and the simple idea of finding out what the trick was this time. Therefore, when Shyamalan revealed his hand in the epilogue of The Village, not a single jaw hit the floor because some viewers were capable of figuring it out for themselves, some had looked it up online beforehand, some thought they easily could have figured it out even though they hadn’t, and others didn’t think much of it because it was nowhere near as dramatically exhilarating as the final reveal in The Sixth Sense, which left many viewers perplexed, mesmerized and incontinent.
However, in contrast to Shyamalan’s preceding works whose final twists were seen as endpoints for their respective narrative journeys, the big reveal in The Village – that not only are Those We Do Not Speak Of not real but the story takes place in present day America – has a different role to play. It does not re-contextualize the journey of its central characters at all. Instead, it affects the viewer’s perception of the story. And it arguably is less potent as a result. Hypothetically, a similar effect would be observed if the final reveal in The Sixth Sense did not involve Malcolm finding out he was in fact a ghost, but rather the audience being the only ones to make this discovery. Consequently, the entire film would have been reduced to a cheap illusion, a carnival trick with very little depth, which is exactly how The Village was received. Once the viewers realized what was happening or had their suspicions confirmed, they were no longer interested, which was their biggest mistake because there’s much more to be discovered in the film when the filter of its central twist is applied to the narrative.
It could be argued that once the filmmaker reveals his hand, the conversation about this film can start. Instead, it was shut down prematurely, as even some of the most prominent critics at the time failed to inquire what The Village was trying to say. Hence, the entirety of the discussion surrounding the film pertained solely to the plot and the twist being a rank disappointment and an alleged proof that M. Night Shyamalan had bought into his own infallibility. Moreover, very little was said about its central love story functioning as a fairy tale with its implicit commentary on artistic escapism woven into the analysis, or about the powerful social commentary the movie makes with its allegory.
It is a fundamental mistake to discredit The Village as a cheap trick incapable of supporting its own weight, though it requires the viewer either to revisit the film in the cold light of day or to simply put their own expectations to one side and examine what the film achieves with its pivotal twist. Granted, once Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) climbs over the fence and runs into a park ranger – which repositions the film from what the viewer was led to believe was 19th century to America in 2004 – her own arc remains unchanged. After all, she is blind and cannot realize what the audience will immediately recognize. The only secret she is let in on is that the creatures in the woods outside the village are not real; they are make-believe. And even this revelation is thrown into doubt after her confrontation with Noah (Adrien Brody) who attacks her in the forest while wearing the creature outfit. Crucially, she is able to make her way back home and bring medicine for Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix) and have a fighting chance at a happily-ever-after future with him as prospective leaders of their community.
What changes is the viewer perception of their circumstances. The revelation the film is not a ‘real’ period piece is only a small part of the picture. In the same breath it is admitted that at some point in the past The Elders decided, all prompted by suffering a tragic loss of a loved one, to remove themselves from society and start anew. They wanted to shield their own families from the pain they have all endured and pretended the outside world did not exist. This in its own right forms a basis for a rich conversation about the world at large and begs a question why anybody would be desperate enough to abandon the world, deny their children education, socializing with other kids and even basic healthcare provisions. Consequently, the film as a whole becomes a functional allegory about, conservative parenting, post-9/11 anxieties, brutalization of society, and widespread uncertainty connected to the fact the US was at the time engaged in two military interventions overseas, political tensions were at an all-time high and that future prospects for regular folks did not inspire much hope.
But... here’s the most important part. The Elders are not regular Americans. They are not Average Joe and Workaday Jane who one day decided to leave everything behind and moved into a forest in the middle of nowhere. After all, it would be rather difficult to establish their escapist utopia by simply finding a remote location to stage their role-playing experiment because at some point they would be discovered by passers-by. They would see planes flying overhead and it would require a whole lot more mental gymnastics to convince their children to stay put. Putting on a costume every other night to preserve the magic would not suffice. Their escape from the world is rendered possible only because they have the means to do it. At least one of them, Edward Walker (William Hurt), is a billionaire. Although it is not treated with the gravity of the central twist, this realization should serve to re-contextualize the film even further and turn The Village from a functional allegory about anxieties of its time into a satire.
All of a sudden, Shyamalan’s film becomes much more biting because the idea of these people banding together and sequestering themselves from the society becomes a metaphor for the one per cent locking themselves away in their multimillion-dollar mansions and pretending the problems of the world do not exist to them. Admittedly, this perspective makes The Village a much more timeless piece of cinema and one that seems to be particularly hard-hitting in the current era where the chasm between the richest and the poorest in all developed societies has widened so much that it put the very existence of the concept of a middle class in palpable danger. As a result, one could view The Village not as a supernatural thriller or a Twilight Zone-esque experiment, but rather as a formidable companion to the works of Michael Haneke who has spent his entire career satirizing the bourgeoisie, jabbing at the silver-spoon privilege locked away in their ivory towers surrounded by immeasurable wealth and proving time after time that financial wealth is not enough to shield anybody from despair.
Viewing The Village through this lens is not entirely a projection aided by the shifting zeitgeist, however. In fact, in its initial guise the film was supposed to have a different ending where Ivy meets a truck driver, who is later seen talking to a bunch of locals at a gas station. There he is told that the woods where the titular village is found is a fenced-off wildlife reserve which belongs to the Walker family and that Edward Walker himself had disappeared a long time ago. It is also remarked that the owners of the land had ensured that flights would be redirected away from this place. The film then cuts to black right after the truck driver shakes his head in disbelief and makes a comment about rich white people being crazy.
Because the screenplay was leaked online, Shyamalan was forced to make changes to the story. This was a blessing in disguise as far as the fairy tale drama is concerned, but it equally diluted the option to see the film as completely satirical. Naturally, some vestiges of this scene were preserved and baked into the theatrical cut, but it is no longer left in plain sight for the audience to ingest and process. However, it is still possible to deduce that the very people who one day took it upon themselves to create an idyllic society for their children to live in were rich enough to afford a slab of land, fence it off from the world, hire staff to maintain it from the outside and pay whomever needed to be paid to reroute the planes away; not to preserve the wildlife contained within the reserve – because there is no reserve – but to preserve the myth they were peddling to their children while playing fast-and-loose with their wellbeing, denying them healthcare and presiding over their untimely deaths.
After all, the film itself starts with the image of a grieving father (Brendan Gleeson), the ultimate tragedy because no parent is expected to bury their children. However, the possibility this death could have been avoided had The Elders decided to seek medical help in time – which they didn’t to preserve their dream – becomes a crucial part of the film’s emerging social commentary. The fairy tale about saving a loved one, finding one’s strength and preserving the utopia for future generations turns much darker when the filter of class critique is applied. The Village evolves into a multi-layered tale about the impossibility to sequester oneself from the problems of humanity because evil emerges naturally in humans. And most importantly, it becomes a scathing indictment of the richest castes in society who deliberately choose to use their wealth, power and influence for their own benefit and nobody else’s. Their handcrafted period utopia is not a sanctuary or refuge from the evil of the outside world, but an expression of denial and elitist selfish privilege.
Not everyone can afford to wall themselves off in elective seclusion in the aftermath of a personal tragedy. In fact, most people, when facing the same tragedy as these characters, have to soldier on, go back to work and make sure they can put food on the table. Therefore, the characters’ dream to create an evil-free utopia in the middle of nowhere is tantamount to cowardice, or even betrayal of their fundamental responsibility towards the very society they have left behind. Arguably, instead of paying for planes not to fly over their little idyll they could have used the same money to help others, lift someone out of poverty, inject some of their wealth into education and infrastructure and perhaps prevent others from suffering the same fate as they did. But they chose to look out for themselves.
Much like the Sandin family in The Purge, they fortified themselves in the ivory tower of their own creation, stuck fingers in their ears and pretended the outside world did not exist while they could have made a difference, even if in a limited capacity. Nevertheless, this perspective makes The Village a powerful and timely piece of stinging commentary, especially relevant during a global pandemic rolling through the world like a destructive tidal wave. It’s a reminder that some people, who have the means to make a difference, make a conscious choice not to. They are happy to sequester themselves in their mansions while the working classes suffer. At least, Shyamalan’s villagers did not have the audacity to tweet from their secluded forest about the importance of staying home, or worse yet, to seek attention by butchering John Lennon’s “Imagine”.
