VILLAGE OF THE WATERMILLS: REFLECTION
The short film “Village of the Watermills” made by Akira Kurosawa portrays a stark
contrast between the technologically driven life that has a stranglehold on most people today
and being contented and maximize what nature is providing village lifestyle which is considered
ancient. In the middle of a time where technology is at the top of everything, the life of
everything and everyone, a traveler discovers a village populated with simple living, completely
dependent on nature, and uses it to live every day. The entire scene emphasizes the role played
by nature in giving life to what the people call “The Village”. It is not of the past, but a place out
of time. . The houses are made of wood and paper. The water wheels are also wood, and we
see no signs of metals except for the bells and Western instruments used in the funeral
procession. The only glass in the scene lurks in the dark depths of the building by the riverbank,
an oil lamp.
The film is all about celebrating life and nature and it has a major criticism against
science and technology as the cause of pollution and misery. It is not the technology itself but
what Man does with it, which means this is ultimately a film about the spirit of man and its
capability to create and destroy at the same time. The Village of the Watermills seems like a
manifestation of what your self should ideally feel like when you’re in a meditative state:
Serene, peaceful, with nothing of the outside world barging in on you. A place which exists only
for itself and which represents your inner being, after all the clutter and noise and bullshit of
the modern world is swept aside. It portrays what life would be if people are seeking for peace
and the true essence of life, to be one with nature and not for money and other luxury things
and living.
“People today have forgotten they’re just a part of nature”, an excerpt on the film but
explained the whole sense of the world we are part of. We are taking everything for granted,
extracting, and consuming resources like there are no tomorrow and practice activities that
destroy the only habitat we have. The film made the viewer realize that technology’s advocate
can sometimes be a never-ending illusion. The promised innovations that aim to make life
easier and to live with convenience are also the inventions that leave us dissatisfied in the end
and make us demand more. We develop technology that is people-centered and is separate
from nature. We are messing with our habitat bit by bit and ignore the unbalance of technology
that we adore and the nature that we live in. We think that convenience is better. That living in
a fast-paced world is better, in a way that we can generate more money out of it. That’s the
problem of the majority of the people living in the world, seeking money and collecting them as
if money is more than just a paper and it gives them pleasure but it is not, it does not. We are
blind following what the society dictates, even if the standard of living does not make us happy
and cannot bring us peace of mind and to live in peace with harmony.
Technology has been generous to us so far. The ability to contact anyone within three
seconds of thinking about it, relaxing in the bed under the glow of the TV, and walking to a big
box in the kitchen and pulling out a cold drink are all great creature comforts. Indeed
technology can be beneficial. Faster land cultivation, faster transportation, faster learning
&education, as well as entertainment. But do we really need these things?
The film ends with a celebration of a villager’s life. Celebrating the life of a woman who
passed away at the age of ninety-nine, this manner is rarely if ever seen in modern culture. It is
rare to celebrate death since we commonly see it as a day of anguish and mourning. But the
villagers have accepted the nature of life - that it is temporary and we will live a life beyond our
current one. Maybe that is the secret beyond the mystery of life, to be one with nature, to
embrace nature as part of us. Maybe in that way, we can enjoy life, live a happy life, and live as
long as the age of one hundred.