JUST WATCHED THE VILLAGE
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****If you want to see The Village, and you HAVE NOT seen it yet, this post will ruin it for you! :-) ****************************
Hey.
I just watched The Village for the first time and it really made my mind race. I would love to discuss it with someone but my hubby HATES horror, suspense type movies so I am "picking on" ya'll a little....:-) I think it is a great conversation movie, especially for parents, but some of the ideas racing through my mind might be controversial, so to be on the safe side I thought I'd post here.......
Would you deceive your children, scaring them from a pretend monster in the woods, knowing that their terror is real, to keep them from the greater horror of the real monsters in our world? (murder, rape, etc.)
Would you be an elder in the village? Is the greater good the honesty in "outing" the elders OR is the greater purpose trying to start a "peaceful" society even if it starts in deceit?
Is ANY "Garden of Eden" doomed because it must have humans as the inhabitants?
Is the trauma in our society enough of a reason to abandon it?
Anyone see a similarity between the first sin in The Garden of Eden being murder and the first sin in The Village being murder?
I love movies like this, they make me think.....
As you can read my mind is racing, have you seen the village, what did you think? I thought it was fascinating.......
AJ
I saw the movie. I have to say the idea of a "Utopia" is very appealing, I don't agree with the way they did it. Also, with medical advances and medications available, letting sick people (kids) die rather than go to town and get medicine is just unnecessary. I wondered in the movie is the dad had let his blind dd go to get the medicine for her betrothed because she was blind and wouldn't know what was really out there. I did really like the movie, though. I just don't think deceiving your children is worth it. There are other ways to live like that. Jmho  Interesting discussion.
Yes, I think any society is doomed because it's populated by humans, all of whom are sinful.
I do think it's very wrong to make your kids terrified of a pretend monster and to the KIDS, the pretend monster is just as horrible as the rapist. It's the PARENTS who know the monster is pretend and that rapists are real...but the kids have no clue of any of that, they are simply terrified of this THING the parents keep scaring them with. Also, while real rapists and murderers do exist in normal society, parents don't go around everyday telling them to stay close to home because there are rapists in the woods. In normal society the rapists and murderers don't come out at night on a regular basis and terrorize the same small community. The true horrors of the real world need to be rationalized and put into perspective. It's the world, everyone needs to dwell IN it. Kids need to be protected as children, and educated as they grow older and are able to understand certain things. Equipping them with the knowledge and tools to keep themselves safe is what responsible parents do. They teach them about safety, they tell them what to do in certain situations, they role play, they tell them about policemen and firemen and the phone number 911. They teach them traffic rules and give them bike helmets and buckle them up in cars. They discourage drugs and alcohol which makes people more vulnerable to the rapists/murderers. Etc.! They DON'T shelter them to such an extreme and instead invent a terrifying killer monster!!! WHAT were they thinking???
Also, note how in their 'perfect, safe' society, kids still got sick, people were still born with birth defects....didn't the whole thing unravel because a boy was born mentally impaired? Does that mean they'll need to start killing the imperfect children before those kids infect their perfect society? Their 'solution' is just full of problems.
Now I have to put a disclaimer on here and say that I am the opposite of you and your husband. I won't watch horror movies and I don't like suspense, either. So, I did not watch this movie but I did read extensively about it while my husband watched it and I realized that it really doesn't qualify as a horror movie at all. I would have watched it if I'd known it was just all a made up utopia. But at any rate, from all my reading and from my husband's explanations of it I thought I had enough of it to throw my two cents in.
I'm glad both of you threw your opinions in because I was starting to think I picked a "stinker" topic! Nobody was answering. LOL!LOL!
I guess, I should say that I DO NOT AGREE with the foundation of the movie. But I do think it raises some interesting questions. I thought the young man who was mentally impaired was born normal and was impaired because he was sick as a child and his fever got too high. Oh well, I suppose it doesn't matter, the point of the movie is that he was impaired in some way....
Another interesting note was that all of the "elders" had been in the same counseling group because of losing a family member to violent murderous crimes and then, when Loucious (sp?) the young man, was stabbed in violent crime by the brother of the fiance, THEN the Dad finally took some action and let his blind daughter go for the medicine. Because the Dad, who lost his Father to violent crime, could relate to his daughter, who might lose her fiance to violent crime. AND eventually, the other elders in his group, while they DID NOT appreciate him making that decision on his own, condoned the decision for the same reasons.
They were trying to create a village with no crime. So, there was no money, no technology, no modernisms.......
It is just a really interesting movie. AJ
The impaired boy probably WAS born normal and then got sick....like I said, I didn't actually watch the movie so I assume you are right. Maybe I'll watch it sometime...I'm more intrigued.
Hey, was the girl who was blind born blind? Or did she suffer some accident? Because a girl born blind isn't perfect....and especially with their lack of resources and isolation, a blind child could easily become a problem child and wreck their society. They could also cause accidents like fires or something.
No, Kate, she wasn't born blind. I gathered from the movie she had some sort of illness or it was progressive because the dad said "When I realized my daughter was going to be blind..." or something to that effect. I don't remember how old she was when she lost her sight. Also, I do think she could see lights and shadows, because she said she saw "colors" around some people and she'd tease Loucious about not telling what color she saw around him.
Right. We, as the audience are led to believe that the girl was not born blind and became blind by sickness.
We are in GA and we are having a SNOW DAY (A big deal for us southerners) There is about 4 inches (maybe) of ice on the roads and yards and everything, including church tomorrow has SHUT DOWN! (How our northern friends would laugh!) Anyway, Hubby is home today (usually works Saturdays) and since I told him Those Whom We Do Not Speak Of are actually fake and the real foundation of the movie, he agreed to watch it with me. He thinks the same thing I do, that it is an interesting, if deceitful foundation and that there is no Utopia. Also, I watched the Bonus tracks of the movie and part of it was about the cast going to a type of "boot camp" and living two weeks as if they were actually in the 19th century, which was interesting. Hubby and I both think that there will be a sequel.
I think the Park Ranger from the 21st century is going over the fence to check out The Village. And that will be the sequel.....but we'll see....I don't remember it being real great in the theatres so there may not be a part two.....
Anyway, it still rattles around in my head:
Are the horrors of our world and our society enough reason to abandon it? And if so, and if we were to abandon it, could we recreate a "village" type enviornment with peace or eventually (and I think so, yes) would someone be bound to mess it up?
And is MURDER bound to be the first trespass in any Fake Paradise? Is that because when we "start over" it is easy to suppress the "little things" and then eventually we just blow from the little envies, and covetness and jealousies until we wind up killing someone? Like Noah finally "losing it" when Loucious (if I am going to write about this movie I have to find out how to spell Loucious) lol lol anyway, like when Noah finally "lost it" and stabbed Loucious?
Eventually, the snow days will be over and I won't have time to sit around and muse over a movie but it is fun while it last, isn't it? And it is fascinating. I am the type of person who would not want to be in The Village but who would want to observe the social paths and mores within The Village.....:-)
I just watched this over the weekend. I thought it was facinating. I agree I was much more comfortable watching it once I realized it was all made up! The part that gets me is in the beginning when the little boy dies and the dad is obviously wondering if he made the right choice. I think there are things about the society that are neat. We let money interfer too much with our morals. Wouldn't it be great to live in a society where we are all equal, all fed, like a big happy family? But then I look at my family, big, hmmm not always so happy. Then what. I think the elders committed the first murders when they didn't go for help when needed. I guess I can understand an isolated society, where you are secluded and don't go to town for much (like the amish), but you can't just let people die.
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