As I was studying the 1980’s, of all things, for my History homework, I somehow came across a video clip on YouTube that sparked this memory that I feel inclined to share here…
In the summer of 2004, I started massage school and my world turned upside down. For a long time, I had been questioning all that I had once known to be true. That questioning intensified surprisingly the moment I stepped on the campus of Myotherapy College of Utah. In that space, I began to learn so much about myself – completely unrelated to massage therapy, actually. And this learning began causing me to deeply question myself, my beliefs, my religious upbringing and everything that was at the root of my childhood.
Around this same time, a movie was finally released – a movie that I had been awaiting for about a year – M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. Every time I had seen the preview (below this paragraph), my hair had stood on end. I knew it was a movie that I HAD to see, but I didn’t know why. There was no way I could have known exactly why because the trailers did not elude – AT ALL – to the premise of the movie. While I know that this movie was a major let down for many people, due to it not upholding its promise of horror that seemed to be foretold in the previews, for me it was a life-changing event.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB55bv4B8LQ]
I entered the movie theatre the first week it was out, found my seat with my best friend and a few other people and settled in. Again, I could have never been prepared for the reasons why until actually sitting through the movie. (If you haven’t seen the movie and wish to do so without it being spoiled, then please stop reading.)
I watched in awe as the story unfolded before my eyes, opening on a tender scene of a man bent over a plain pinewood coffin and then delved right into the storyline of this seemingly simple, gentlefolk village. With cinematography and symphonic underscore, Shyamalan tells the tale of this genteel life with characters speaking in old, proper grammar, non-contracted English in a peculiar way that struck my curiosity.
And then something happened.
About 8 minutes into the movie, as the thickening of the plot about “something killing our dogs” began to boil, there was a meeting of twelve adults in the town hall. They were talking about mundane things until somebody came barging through the door.
“There is a young man who has requested a word with the elders,” the gentleman stated, wringing his hat nervously in his hands, bowing his head slightly in a show of apologetic deference.
My hair immediately stood on end and my stomach turned over. Elders? Something about the word set me on high alert and fear rose in my throat, practically choking off my air. I glanced to my right. My friend was completely unaffected by anything going on and it seemed no one else around me was as bothered as I. However, something was seriously wrong for me. Seriously. Wrong.
Twelve. Elders.
Something was exploding inside me. I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t. All I had known to be true was unraveling in a movie that was supposed to be a silly scary, monster movie not something that was going to dismantle my belief system. I sat there, stunned, feeling all this wretchedness bouncing about inside me and the huge questions that were taking form.
I had been questioning the LDS church since 1988 although I hadn’t told anyone about that. I kept it hidden from myself pretty well too and would attempt to ignore the questions that would tickle at the edges of my brain before flitting off into the darkest reaches of my being. The questions got bigger and bolder as time went on, but I got quicker at batting them away from my consciousness. By the time my daughter was born in 1997, they were very near to the surface, clouding my awareness and scaring me to the end of my wits. As if, even for thinking it, I was going to be cast into Outer Darkness.
There, however, in the theatre, with that one word – Elders – the questions crashed forward, tears filled my eyes and my world started tumbling down around me. And about 20 minutes into the movie, one of the Elders started telling her son about “The Towne” and the horrors there.
And Lucius, her son, says, “I am not the one with secrets.”
“What is your meaning?” His mother replied.
“There are secrets in every corner of this village. Do you not feel it? Do you not see it?”
He was speaking of something specific to the storyline of this movie. However, for me, it was my undoing. It released the dam of my tears and they started coursing down my cheeks. I didn’t understand why I was suddenly so emotional, crying and confused. I heard the questions yelling at me and I watched the horror of my own undoing unfolding before my very eyes.
I began to get a feeling for the premise of the movie; that what was going on on the surface of this village and the lives of its people was not what needed to be seen, but rather the secrets hiding in every corner that needed to be ferreted out. The music screeched and banged, building the tension in the theater and, all the while, the religious beliefs of my childhood were fracturing and crumbling down around me, the loudness of their destruction battling to overcome the soundtrack that bounded through the sound system.
Forty minutes into the movie was when the devastation began for me. This video below is the scenes that caused my belief system to erupt in a rain of fire:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbJpJBKUf4k]
Upon first sighting of the beast in red, I suddenly understood that something was going on. I didn’t know, quite yet, what was going on, but I could feel it deep inside me. It was a visceral knowing that something was seriously wrong and it had to do with the fact that NONE of the elders were to be found and the children were cowering in the cellars, shivering and fearing for their lives with only older children to comfort them.
Where were the Elders?!
I watched the faces of those terrified children and felt a familiar fear boiling around inside me. I understood that sheer terror. I had lived with it my whole life. The fear that something was going to get me if I didn’t do exactly as the Elders had told me to. As the terrorizing of the youth of the children continued on and the REAL truth of who were the real “those we do not speak of” and how many falsehoods had been fabricated and how many terrifying stunts had been pulled to keep the “secrets” of The Village, I witnessed my beliefs falling on the floor like discarded wares.
My religion was The Village. Oh dear God.
And after Ivy pleads with her father, the Head Elder, to be allowed to travel beyond the boundaries of The Village to find help and medicine, to save Lucius, the man she loves, she says, “You are my father. I will listen to you in all things. I will trust your decision.”
I wept. No. Actually, I sobbed. A big enough sob that my friend looked at me and offered his hand for me to hold, having no idea why I was so affected by what I was watching on the screen.
This movie is about deception in the greatest degree. It tells the tale of a group of adults who chose to leave the “real world” and go into the wilderness to start a new life. It tells how they were willing to leave all else behind them and declare it forbidden to speak of or long for. The Elders literally locked their history up in black boxes that they each stored in their homes to remind them of the evils that lurked beyond the boundaries of The Village. The Elders concocted stories and played into the fears of their children and even went as far as to create monsters to solidify those fears. Now, take that one more step further. The Elders were the monsters!
These adults willingly terrified their children to keep them in line. These adults willingly told them lies to keep them in line. And they so deeply ingrained these beliefs in their offspring that, when it came time to go against those teachings to save one of their own, the children could not do it. The adults would not do it. And even though her father revealed all of the truths to Ivy so she could be relieved of her fears to take her journey, she was sworn into secrecy so that those who traveled with her wouldn’t know the truth and eventually left her stranded, alone, due to the overriding fears of their upbringing.
As I watched Ivy’s dawning realization that she had lived a life built on complete falsehoods, my heart stopped beating for a few moments. The tears that had not stopped since Lucius had spoken about the secrets suddenly stopped as hot anger pounded through me while I witnessed The Elders arguing about saving Lucius’s life by sending Ivy beyond the boundaries which would jeopardize their paradisaical life in The Village.
And then Edward, Ivy’s father says, “She is more capable than most in this village and she is lead by love. The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.”
And I crumbled again. I know love. I know truth. And suddenly I understood. The church in which I had been raised no longer was a place of love and truth for me.
For me, this movie opened me up to my own self in ways I could not have imagined merely by seeing the previews. Everything changed for me in that 2-hour movie. Especially as it came to a close and the full expanse of The Elders’ willingness to feed into the deception became painfully detailed and lurid.
It was the end for me.
