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Rating: Released in 2004 to mixed critical reviews and relative public success, "The Village" by the Indian director M. Night Shyamalan (author of the overrated "The Sixth Sense") stands as one of the most interesting cinematic reflections on the tragedies of September 11 and, more generally, on fear and its moral and political implications.
In an isolated rural village in the United States, life flows serenely according to the rhythms of the early 1800s, in a solidarity-based environment governed by some wise men of the town. However, the environment, surrounded by a wooded area, is overshadowed by the presence of hidden, ancestral beings of the woods, making it essentially impossible for the industrious inhabitants to leave the village, also due to the radical prohibition by the elders. Who are, or what do these presences represent? What can happen to those who defy fate by entering the darkness of the forest? And what lies beyond the thicket? A blind young girl is tasked with uncovering a truth that cannot be reported back and shared with the villagers.
Technically well-shot (especially regarding the use of lighting and cinematography), effectively acted, thanks to the presence of actors like William Hurt and Adrien Brody, along with the revelation Bryce Dallas Howard, the film initially presents a slow pace, mirroring the slow and static organization of village life, gradually building up in the second part, where the story unfolds the blind girl’s adventures through the forest and its mysteries, adding almost a thriller touch to what is essentially a thematic narrative.
The theme, as previously mentioned, concerns the relationship between the individual, their social organization, and the fear of the other, the different, used as a cement to strengthen the community and quell its individualistic impulses, if not its progressive transformation and disintegration: it is interesting to note, without revealing too much about the film's outcomes, how the villagers' terror of the forest’s beings, seemingly monstrous creatures with whom it appears impossible to establish any relationship or dialogue, is manipulated by the village’s elders to ensure the unity of the village itself in a perspective of contrast between "Us" and "Them," between the beauty of the secluded rural homeland and the mystery of the labyrinthine forest.
The subjugation to which the villagers submit themselves, partly spontaneously, partly by induction, is therefore both psychological-moral and political: psychological-moral in terms of preserving the purity of inexperience of the other and the different, in the endless present of a village isolated from the world; political in the sense of being instrumental to the conservation of the status quo, denying the experience of the different which, by shaking certainties, also fosters social and collective evolution.
For the immigrant Shyamalan, the awareness of the issue, with reference to American society (but also European or Italian, to be fair), appears strong and, probably, tinged with a certain autobiographical element, where the conflict between the villagers and the forest world can likely be seen as a metaphor for the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world.
It goes without saying that the director does not provide an answer to the moral and political distress that permeates the film: after all, isn't fear perhaps the true glue of civil life, the reason why man has gathered with other men? The problem, if anything, is in understanding who are the ghosts and enemies to defend against, hoping they are not within society itself, rather than in an external world, more hypothetical than real.
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