The Village directed by M. Night Shyamalan portrays a life in which a group of people break away from normal society and create an entire new society of people in a town far away hidden in a group of woods. The reason these people created such a secluded village was to create an ideal in life. As the movie plays out, you come to find out that each of the leaders of this town had tragic stories that happened to them or their family members including murder, theft, and just horrific life styles. They then got together and decided that they would create this ideal lifestyle where they could control everything and more important stop those things from happening. To keep everyone in the town, they created this elaborate idea that there are monsters that live in the nearby woods. They said that a tready exists between them and these monsters that if you didn’t breach their borders, they wouldn’t come into the village. The interesting thing is that towards the end of the movie, with all the perfect elements of their ideal society, an attempt of murder came into play and they realized that you can’t really control a society without taking away their agency to live. I found it interesting in life that we sometimes try to create this ideal heaven for ourselves thinking that no matter what happens, nothing wrong will fall into our laps. We are mistaken that in order to create such a society where complete control is present, our agency to act is not.
I think they still had their agency, they just decided to live according to certain covenants. They somewhat took away agency because they tricked people into thinking the monsters existed, but that was only while they were children. We are safe to assume the adults knew, or at least the story doesn't lead us to believe otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI think the greater question is, what things should we go without in order to maintain a desired goodness in life. The internet brings so much bad, but it also brings so much good. Would it be worth going without these things in order to have more righteousness?
The movie asks tough questions. I like the way it ends. The father says something to the effect of "well, the kid did fall in the whole and die, we can continue this lie if we want. IF that is what we want to do . . . "
And it asks, should we do it.
I do not think the answer is very clear cut. Good arguments could be made each way.