"The Forgotten Village" (1941) is timeless picture of a group of Mexican rural village dwellers, who star unpretentiously as victims of incompetent folk treatment, their own resistance to change, the town's infected well water, and individual stress from the untimely deaths of children in the village. It is presented with the dramatic literary poetry of John Steinbeck,("Of Mice and Men" and "Grapes of Wrath"), the author of the story and the screenplay, eloquently told by the calm narrative voice of Burgess Meredith.
It is not clear if the adults of the village are similarly afflicted by the well water. The issue of water, a world wide issue today, is the backdrop for the drama of the characters.
The cast of characters reveal specific roles: there is "bad" witch doctor herbalist who fails to cure by laying a snake skin on the belly of a sick little girl. The girl's brother, Juan Diego, is rejected from his family for taking his stricken sister to local government medical officials who apply a spoonful of liquid medicine and then inject her with a drug.
The movie indicates the promise of modern medicine, and the story by John Steinbeck focuses on the environmental contamination in well water (a reality in many third world countries nowadays as well), playing down the value of the medicine woman's powers of comfort and spiritual reassurance, consciousness, etc. Just as the pharmaceutical drugs are not named, there is no mention by Steinbeck of any herbal plants and spices- just scenes where they are administered by the old herbalist.
The message to the viewer is that the old ways did not always work, in the face of grinding poverty and a bad water supply. But the rebellion against the "new" medicine by the villagers may be in part due to an instinctive awareness that for billions of years, human beings have found healing in barks, spices, herbs and plants of many kinds. A synthetic approach to healing ends the movie where white-coat clad students lean over equipment in labs seeking the answers to illness. Prevention and the mind-body connection is left to the imagination in 1941.
The well-meaning teacher in the village acts as the quiet voice of reason in the movie, seeking to bring the usefulness of water treatment to the village, and to bring pharmaceutical medicines.
Burgess Meredith's narration appropriately disappears behind the images of real people attending to their sick children.
With side effects of modern medicines claiming lives of over 100,000 people per year according to records published in recent years, this film now sounds a clarion call for a new balance- prevention-oriented medicine, not drugs with bad side effects. (Prevention in the form of public health- the protection of public wells also is indicated to make the public environment safer, for example.) In this movie, the message is the old ways did not work. But, the message today- 70 years later- is when is it time to abandon the new (drugs with bad, often fatal side effects) and learn about and apply some of the ancient wisdom.
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Written by Mary Ellen Graybill, a widely published writer who is a Letters Member of Pen Women (Gunpowder Branch, Maryland). Publications include The Baltimore SUN (MD USA)
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To date, these are the reviews available: 1. The Forgotten Village (1941) 2. The King's Speech (2010)
A full list of Mary Ellen Graybill's movie reviews on WWW.IMDb.com with links to full texts of reviews is accessible via:http://imdb.com/user/ur24328853/comments
Mary Ellen Graybill's email address is: megraybill@yahoo.com
