MovieChat Forums > The Village (2004) Discussion > what I still don't get...

what I still don't get...

posted 8 years ago by Luke_was_a_terrorist
18 replies | jump to latest

Okay so the elders are really just a bunch of pansies who couldn't live in Philly anymore due to fear and rather than relocate to a not so dangerous major city, like any small town, they decide to spend millions and millions of dollars to hide in the woods and lie, scare, and allow their children to die....

Okay, so why didn't you bring any sort of medical supplies? Children are dying of disease before the age of 10 and that's fine? I understand the point was to make sacrifices for the good of the village, but really, just gonna let all your kids due because you didn't pack any basic medical supplies? (Like the kind you can use on animals and get at a wildlife preserve work station)

And if you say, "Well if they brought medicine it'd be clear it wasn't the 1800's", then think about this.... their children's only knowledge comes from what the elders tell them, they easily could've explained that these medicines are commonplace in the 1800's... True we, the audience would know the truth, but the children know what you tell them.

I think you're the opposite of paranoid, I think you walk around with the delusion people like you.

[–] lm362 8 years ago

Maybe they thought that getting the medicine would tempt others to leave the village, forsaking their way of life and perhaps endangering it. It could also be that since they decided to live as if in a past time, they should accept the way it was totally which would mean not having modern medicine.

I think your calling the elders a bunch of pansies is unkind and cruel. Even people today decide to live simply and apart from the modern world due to some tragedy. It is understandable.

"Do All Things For God's Glory"-1 Corinthians 10:31
I try doing this with my posts

[–] johnston.scot 8 years ago

To make the story work, you pretty much have to finesse some details. It's a movie, and it moves fast enough that you don't have enough time to think some of these things through in detail - at least not in real time while the movie's playing.

Of course, over the course of even a few years, there would've been multiple instances in which someone had a wound turn septic or acquired a readily curable disease, not to mention issues associated with childbirth! ... and anyone with minimal foresight would've perceived the need for medicines and medical equipment.

But then there would'nt have been a story.

[–] ATG6 (3000) 2 years ago

They would have just called it "God's will" and figured it was the cost of protecting themselves from modern life.
Even though He gave us the ability to figure out how to save ourselves from things like that.

[–] JR541 8 years ago

I'd say that they didn't quite think it all the way through and then were just too stubborn to quit for fear of losing the love of their children. They were in total denial and just weren't going to give in.

He's taking the knife out of the Cheese!
Do you think he wants some cheese?

[–] zombiepooh666 8 years ago

Hadn't they been living in the village for many years? If they had brought medicine & medical supplies with them at some point it would run out or expire & some medicine becomes deadly when it expires.

[–] beachbum1701 8 years ago

Maybe it's just a movie trying to tell a story and we shouldn't try to read into it and just enjoy the tale as told.

[–] mel2000 (248) 2 years ago

A good movie will make sense in the universe it created. While I enjoyed The Village, there's no denying that it's built upon plot contrivances in service of delaying the twist reveal.

[–] skuggvarg-13 8 years ago

It is not as simple as to move to a "not so dangerous major city" as the film clearly explains in the end and the history background of the elders, that they wanted to create a more pure society that they hoped would be free from the evils that are in real life all too common in the "not so dangerous" major cities.

[–] TheDuke007-1 8 years ago

I just watched the movie for the first time. I found the ending to be a major plot hole. Why wouldn't an elder go get the medicine? I understand that they took an "oath", but please. You are going to let people, including children, die over an oath? Couldn't they revise their oath? They went to the village because they had a loved one die. They respond by choosing to let MORE loved ones needlessly die through disease? It makes no sense. Letting the blind girl go was extremely risky. In the movie it conveniently worked, but she could have easily found out the truth or exposed the village and brought it to an end. The father had to know it was far less risky for him to go. He was already disobeying the elders, so why not?

[–] skuggvarg-13 8 years ago

Because she allready knew part of the truth, that about the hoax of the creatures in the forest.

[–] evelhussey 8 years ago

He didn't disobey them. Didn't they agree to let Ivy go? He made the oath, she didn't.

The point of this experiment wasn't to make a utopia. It was to live a simpler way of life where they thought they could prevent violent crime. But then Noah stabbed Lucius. They didn't let her go because Lucius might die...people probably died with some regularity there. They let her go because Noah's crime proved their system wrong, and at that point his death would be in vain.

[–] webbrl-177-543920 8 years ago

To protect its premise, the village could only use what it could produce. The elders understood that when they made their initial decision. Higher mortality was a price they were willing to pay because losing a loved one to illness would theoretically hurt less than losing a loved one to violent crime.

[–] mel2000 (248) 2 years ago

To protect its premise, the village could only use what it could produce.

Was their goal to pretend that nothing existed outside their village? If so, their game would have eventually become uncovered as soon as the elders started dying off since there would be no one left to keep up the ruse.

[–] michaelward15 8 years ago

The premise of this movie is not credible and exist only to set up the twist. This is the kind of story that works on TV as a one hour long episode of a Twilight Zone type show, but does work in a feature film where you expect more.

[–] chas437 8 years ago

That's an incredibly shallow interpretation. This is way beyond a horror film with a twist, its about the essence of human community.

[–] partydjz (424) 7 years ago

I think many of you are over estimating the original plan devised to escape the violence of the society from which these people came. They had faults. Some of which would (even after then end of the film) eventually lead to the demise of the "Village".

It was an ideology gone wrong.