The Village

"The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe."-- The Village

About an hour ago, I saw M. Night Shymalan's The Village. Regardless of what people think, I don't regard him as a suspense or horror writer. I regard him as one of the few modern day writers that get good fiction. He isn't just telling a story. He's communicating truth. He does so beautifully. Though Signs and The Village were played up as horror or suspense flicks, many discovered, there's nothing essentially scary about either movie. I have seen both and enjoyed both, but where Signs fails to get certain points across, The Village triumphs through an increased use of symbolism and word scheme. The main link in both of his films is the obvious struggle between good and evil. Both are stories where evil encroaches on good's territory and good's attempt at defending itself. (I don't want to say too much because, if you haven't seen these films I encourage you to.) But what Shymalan does so skillfully is create a layered struggle. The outer layer being good's fight with evil. The central and more important struggle in both films is the unrest inside the camp of the good. With all that is going on in day to day life while fighting off the evil, the good find themselves falling into sin and losing faith in the cause. While Signs was more of a focus on faith and the will of God, I believe The Village deals directly with the fallenness of man and the inescapability of his evil nature. Either way, I recommend both films, if not for the dialogue alone that Shymalan creates in both (the flow of the dialogue it's arrangement in The Village are extremely well done), for the cinematography and beauty of what is onscreen. And if for neither of those, just to see which one you like better. My pick is the The Village. Please respond with your thoughts on the symbols in each.