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

The world of The Village is an insular one, completely removed from the rest of modern society and set to live under the rule of an aged elite for generations to come. It damages, represses, and isolates its inhabitants in both the grander context of the world around them and within its own confines. The parents scare the children into submission and then claim they never meant to harm. There's a personal connection I could make here -- one that I'll refrain from writing about until I see this again -- but what really strikes me here is how pungent and everpresent the film's blatant romanticism is despite its eventual recontextualization. 

The focus of the film shifts multiple times throughout, but each one of its multiple threads is centered around love. Unrequited love, a quest to save a lover, etc. The emotion in Shyamalan's films is incredibly blunt, and when paired with a piece entirely fixated on the power of love and its ability to save individuals from the unwavering shackles of traditionalism and generational trauma, that fact becomes so overwhelmingly obvious that it's almost too much to bear. To quote my favorite movie of all time, "Unless you love, your life will flash by." Based on this film, I think Shyamalan would agree. <3