You may run from sorrow, as we have. Sorrow will find you.
August Nicholson
In the wake of the ineffable, belief is often a beacon. Yet when used to mask the truth, belief stifles hope.
A prompt successor to Signs, 2004’s The Village marked the critical descent of M. Night Shyamalan. Understandably so, as the film emphasizes the artist’s most consistent weaknesses. Shyamalan’s subtext, for instance, is ironically at its most overt as he struggles to refresh a tale akin to Washington Irving. Unfortunately, the filmmaker is unable to intertwine naturalism with the discourse needed of a period piece, and the result is often sluggish and painful. Despite sabotaging many of the feature’s basic mechanisms, what persists over more than a decade removed from the piece is perhaps one of Shyamalan’s strongest hallmarks: His dissection of belief. Unlike Unbreakable and Signs, however, The Village reaches the boon of the institution by first cutting through its banes.
Similar to his prior film, Shyamalan builds a foundation for his examination through grief. In the opening scene one of the township’s elders, August Nicholson, cries profusely while clutching a child’s casket. The community watches blankly as the man pleads to no avail, shifting to frame in which he is flanked by his seven-year old’s casket and the burial. In a sense, he is trapped between ritual and reality, attempting to make sense of the latter while literally clinging to the former. This image sets a precedent for the film’s bulk. As the village is struck by the cruelty of reality such as infanticide, they quickly shift to the basis of their belief: The aversion of suffering.
In avoiding the pain, the community forges a bilateral system. Seemingly removed from history yet simultaneously going through the motions of nineteenth-century Americana, the elders consider their holidays for the year. The discovery of a skinned dog compels Chief Walker (William Hurt) to allude to “Those We Don’t Speak Of” to his elementary classroom. “Those” in question refer to a group of red-hooded beasts, whose influence prohibits anyone from venturing into the surrounding woods. To maintain solace, the village insists on the use of a “good,” neutral color, yellow. Paralleling flowers and baked goods, yellow serves to stave red, simply deemed “the bad color.” Though rudimentary, the distinction allows for symbols, and by extension mythology, to leverage the tendencies of the village’s belief.
At the heart of his narrative, Shyamalan posits three figures to challenge and ultimately fracture this system. Most notably is Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard), the blind daughter of Chief Walker whose playful and abrasive nature gradually works against the structure of the village. Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix) follows close behind, his unassuming yet goal-oriented demeanor poking holes through the fear that catalyzes the community’s predicament. Finally, Noah (Adrien Brody) embodies the catalyst for disruption. His disability, comparable to Lenny of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, is in effect, erraticism born in a vacuum; his sometimes violent outbursts are not entirely a fault of his own, but the village is nonetheless helpless in digesting his actions while bound by their own belief.
A developed belief is not an inherent handicap. For instance in Signs, Graham Hess’ background in Christianity, as well as his hiatus, propelled a deeper spiritual understanding of the peril and happenings around him. However, Graham was also compelled to take a desperate and potentially fatal plunge into the unknown to obtain his conclusive sense of actualization. In The Village, Shyamalan illustrates a group that has effectively and in a certain sense literally fashioned their own force of antagonism. In other words, the village’s founders’ debilitating fear of moral ambiguity and its wrath encouraged them to truncate any attempt to understand the world. Just as they are falsely trapped within their valley, the community is a prisoner to the machinations of its own collective belief. When violence spontaneously arises in the village, they are stifled by their own dilemma.
In the midst of a seemingly impenetrable wall of thought, Ivy is ironically the most capable of obtaining some form of understanding without utterly destroying the system. Though her discovery of the “farce” her father unveils involving the beasts is revelatory, Walker is still able to mask the even grander truth. As considered previously, Ivy is only capable of fracturing the system. Her naivety compounded by her blindness prohibits her from seeing the modern world encasing Covington Woods. For the elders, Ivy is an escape rope, a way of flirting with world they abandoned when a situation is at its most desperate.
Even so, Ivy is able to take advantage of her own utility as she encounters the closest manifestation of the village’s myth in the film’s climax. As she ventures through the woods in an attempt to secure medicine from the surrounding town, she is blindsided by one of the red-hooded beasts. Noah, spurred by the exile of the community, puts on one of the elder’s costumes and assumes the form of Covington’s fabricated fear. Ivy, well aware of the façade, is able to sidestep the most prevalent weapon of the village’s belief, killing Noah in the process. Here, Shyamalan illustrates Ivy’s ability to occupy both the illusion of the village and reality without shattering either. Likewise, she delegitimizes the myth while unknowingly approaching the plight of the world Covington attempts to evade.
As evident by the degradation of her “good colored” hood,
Ivy grows increasingly aware that the system built on the village’s belief is
largely meaningless. When she encounters a park ranger after scaling the wall
encasing Covington (actually a well-protected nature reserve), she comments on
the “kindness” of his voice, as opposed to unrelenting hostility the elders
warned of. Just as “sorrow will find” one despite any number of cognitive
barriers, such as the village itself, so too will hope and optimism persist
outside of its boundaries. Despite Ivy ultimately returning to the village in
what would likely be a resumption of its false veneer, she does so with
knowledge that her home is the result of defensive impulse.
The Village may be lackluster in its execution but is validated in its contribution to Shyamalan’s cinematic dissection of belief. Signs may prove to be the more memorable work in retrospect, but this film is necessary for building a comprehensive whole. As life is often a series of inexplicable events, belief is its filter.
