What makes certain movies more enjoyable than others is that they offer the possibility of enjoying a meaning beyond the literal story. The Village is one such movie. Though it has an extremely simple and implausible literal story line, it affords a quite different interpretation altogether.
What follows is my rendering of the story behind the story!
The ring of elders represent society who would like it’s people to live according to their rules and customs. Due to their traumatic experiences, they create a world with artificial boundaries and expect everyone to live behind this boundary. To do this, they construct an elaborate myth; a boundary beyond which, lies a forest with the terrible human-eating beasts and an uneasy truce exists between them and the village. And the boundary is made stronger in many ways - horrendous sounds emanating from the jungle, the ritual of gaurds guarding the boundary and even through the game of colors - yellow as our color and protector versus red as their color. And Boundaries! The perfect line of straight trees separating the two worlds. The mentally challenged person is the only one who can't see the boundary but no one believes him anyways. And the key - Even in moments of crisis, the society is unwilling to break its self set rules. Faced with the prospect of losing her lover, a blind girl defies the boundaries to discover the truth. Did the director use a blind girl to suggest that she was blind to the rules? I would like to believe that it was used as a metaphor as she was finding the path out of the world and everyone is blind while charting out new waters. Also noteworthy, is that some of the elders even break the truth to her, but refuse to take any action themselves - thereby suggesting that they are so trapped by their own creation.
What follows is my rendering of the story behind the story!
The ring of elders represent society who would like it’s people to live according to their rules and customs. Due to their traumatic experiences, they create a world with artificial boundaries and expect everyone to live behind this boundary. To do this, they construct an elaborate myth; a boundary beyond which, lies a forest with the terrible human-eating beasts and an uneasy truce exists between them and the village. And the boundary is made stronger in many ways - horrendous sounds emanating from the jungle, the ritual of gaurds guarding the boundary and even through the game of colors - yellow as our color and protector versus red as their color. And Boundaries! The perfect line of straight trees separating the two worlds. The mentally challenged person is the only one who can't see the boundary but no one believes him anyways. And the key - Even in moments of crisis, the society is unwilling to break its self set rules. Faced with the prospect of losing her lover, a blind girl defies the boundaries to discover the truth. Did the director use a blind girl to suggest that she was blind to the rules? I would like to believe that it was used as a metaphor as she was finding the path out of the world and everyone is blind while charting out new waters. Also noteworthy, is that some of the elders even break the truth to her, but refuse to take any action themselves - thereby suggesting that they are so trapped by their own creation.
