I just saw M. Night Shyamalan's The Village and I must say that this is one his best works. I must admit that I was a bit skeptical about the film because I’ve heard bad reviews from people. I guess they were expecting it to be more like Signs or The Sixth Sense. Still, I was curious-I had to see it for myself. And so last night, Margie and I went to Rockwell to watch it.

For those who have not seen it, do not read this entry.

I find it thought provoking in the sense that it communicated or at least tried to make sense of the human condition and all its complexities. Suffering, love, loss, innocence, good, evil, greed, generosity, sacrifice, selfishness, selflessness and many other traits are all part of it. Great pain sometimes drives people to take extreme measures to prevent its causes and preserve innocence. But in one way or the other, no matter how hard people try to isolate the causes of pain and suffering, they still resurface. For many reasons, they co-exist. The many conditions are opposites and they define each other. They are part of life and that is what makes us human.
We have to accept these as parts of reality but also realize that we all are given the gift of free will. We have the gift of choice or power to choose how we want and how we can live our lives. Many times I have been inflicted with pain, but who hasn’t? We all experience the different things that life throws us and not all of these are agreeable and some of them are excruciating, but we have to make do-we have to learn how to deal.

Ivy as one of the lead characters of the film reminded me so much of one of my best friends-Berta. Ivy was blind but was found to possess the greatest strength among all the other characters. Driven by love and faith, she believed that she could overcome the obstacles and the fear by which the people in the village lived by that prevented them from leaving.
Many of us suffer from fear of various sorts-fear of losing our loved ones, fear of actually pursuing our dreams, fear of illness, fear of change, fear of embarking on a journey into the unknown and so on and so forth. But what amazes me is that people who are physically impaired are much stronger than people who are most able. Berta is one of the living testimonies that I have witnessed that proves this. She is more accomplished than most people I know. She has undergone a tremendous amount of suffering-emotionally, physically and mentally. But because of her strong will and faith, she was able to overcome all these. (I would have to write a book to be able to tell you the whole story. And to those of you who know her and what she went through, you will agree with me.) She is blind, but she sees life in a better light than most people having sight.