The Cinephile Fix

*WARNING CONTAINS STRONG SPOILERS*

          Alejandro Amenabár’s ‘The Others’ opens with a series of spooky hand drawn title shots. The last of these images is that of an old house. An excellent use of transition follows, as the hand drawn house fades into an actual house. ‘The Others’ feels like a Victorian ghost story written by Michael Cox, J. Sheridan LeFanu or Wilkie Collins. With that transition, it is as if Amenabár lifts the pages of one of these great old ghost stories directly to the screen.  

Nicole Kidman plays Grace in a performance that is not your typical take of a horror movie heroine. Kidman uses realism rather than generic acting to introduce the viewers to a flawed, emotional, and troubled woman. Grace lives with her two children in an old mansion in the middle of nowhere. Anne (Alakina Mann) is the daughter and Nicholas (James Bentley) is the younger boy. However, soon three mysterious servants arrive. Since their arrival, a series of strange incidents occur as they all discover they are not alone.

Indeed, the plot is that of a typical haunted house movie. However, ‘The Others’ is much more than that, for it is quite possibly the greatest ghost story ever told on film. This is largely due to all the thought and attention Amenabár gave to his picture. This is one of those rare occasions where the director had total control over his material. Besides taking the helm, Amenabár also wrote the perfectly contained screenplay and composed the haunting yet emotional score.  

The director uses metaphors and German Expressionism to tell his story. Like many expressionistic films of the later stages of that era in German film history, the expressionism in ‘The Others’ lacks exaggeration but is still nonetheless very expressionistic. The film borrows themes of the lost genre by dealing with insanity, madness, mirrors and a dark urban setting.

 The atmosphere in the giant mansion is very dark as the use of light and shadow play key factors. Amenabár is a genius when it comes to metaphors and the use of light and shadow in his film are exactly that, a giant metaphor. Most of the film takes place within dark rooms and dim hallways with flames of candles in lanterns as the only source of light. The audience is kept in the dark throughout the movie and it is not until we reach the explanatory twist that sunlight symbolizing knowledge pours into the house and our minds.

I always wondered why the ghosts in haunted house movies only appeared when the room was dark or it was nighttime. Here Amenabár is generous enough to provide us with a reason for the film’s dark atmosphere. We learn that the children suffer from an incurable illness known as xeroderma pigmentosum preventing them from any direct exposure to sunlight. If the pores of their skin meet any such exposure, the result will be a severe outburst that will lead to their death.  Ironically, when the children finally reach “the light” or knowledge of the truth behind the intruders, they end up dead in that we discover they are ghosts.

What impresses me most each time I watch ‘The Others’ is that the style and substance complement each other creating a visually beautiful movie with enough substance to merit repeated viewings.  Studying the film shot by shot, I discovered a master in control of every frame. Each scene is part of a whole and every shot is there for a reason. Allow me to point out examples in the film to support my gutsy statement.

We are given a time frame when Grace explains to the servants that the postman has not passed by in a week, that it’s been a week of silence as the birds stopped singing, and that the fog lasted a week. Therefore, it is safe to say, they have been dead not knowing it for a week from where the film picks up. The fog plays an important role here as Grace attempts to walk through it seeking a priest to rid the mansion of the “ghosts”. However, since they are dead, Grace and her children are tied to that house and the fog prevents them from going beyond a certain point. Of course, a first time viewer does not discover that until after a second or third viewing. Look at the shot below where Amenabár expresses this entrapment visually.

‘The Others’ is full of such expressionistic shots. The most famous scene in the film is when Anne wearing a new white dress plays with her puppets. Grace having left her daughter in that room, later returns where Anne still wearing the dress continues to play with her puppet. Only this time she is an old woman. The scene is both unsettling and disturbing yet there is more to it than meets the eye. We later learn that the old woman is a medium who was at one point possessed unintentionally by Anne. This is why Anne takes on the form of the old woman earlier in the picture.  Now look at this shot, which takes place before the viewer discovers any of this.

Anne in her communion dress plays with a puppet. The puppet is an old woman and Anne is in total control of that puppet/old woman. Again, a visual representation of what is happening.

‘The Others’ is full of such hints. Not all are visual; some are contained in the dialogue. For instance, after Grace shouts at Anne for misbehaving, Anne starts to breath unevenly. “Stop breathing like that”, Grace tells her. The breathing only gets louder and Grace gets mad and screams, “Stop breathing!” This is a subtle reference to the day Grace went mad suffocating her children using a pillow causing them to “stop breathing”. Later on, this subtle reference to the cause of death happens once again, only this time with Nicholas. As the children hide in the cupboard, Nicholas gasps for air and Anne asks him to “stop breathing like that” or they will get caught. The migraines Grace suffers from throughout the movie may refer to her cause of death, using a gun to blow her brains out.

One scene that caught my attention is when Grace rushes up the house and gets the shotgun. Before she cocks it, there is a déjà-vu expression on her face. It is as if she has done this before. This only shows the dedication Kidman had to that performance.  
The twist in ‘The Others’ as many of us know is a big one. The entire picture builds up to that twist. That does not mean after the unraveling of the twist the movie becomes less watchable. In fact, it is the exact opposite of that for the entire film supports the ending and part of the fun is to catch all the indicators a second, third, or fourth time around. How can we appreciate the lines of Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flangan), the head servant, having watched the movie only once? At one point she tells Grace that sometimes the “death of a loved one can lead people to do the strangest things.” It is such well thought out lines, perfectly composed shots and complementary scenes that makes ‘The Others’ a ghost story unlike any other.

I am aware that calling this film the greatest ghost story of all time is a bold statement. I have seen ‘The Haunting’ and ‘The Innocents’. Both are excellent haunted house films and had great influence on this 2001 movie. However, ‘The Others’ never fails to impress me, more so than the other two, most because of its depth. I am also aware of the fact that many will pan me for these statements. The great Roger Ebert often says, a critic has to be true to his feelings and not merely follow the general consensus of critics. This is how I felt about what I consider a masterpiece of cinema and I stand by my feelings and opinion.

Memento mori or photographs of the dead is a theme eplored in ‘The Others’. Here are some spooky real life pictures of the Victorian era:

 
     Whenever people utter the word ‘movie’, the first thing that pops into the listener’s mind is a narrative fictional movie, be it horror, thriller, crime, romance, comedy, or so on. However, there’s an entire genre dedicated to art movies, and the reason why they aren’t as popular is because they are targeted to a limited audience, rather than the typical mass audience. Most people go watch a movie, to kill time or escape the harsh reality yet in order to fully understand an art film one should keep an eye on the highly symbolic content within the movie, and try to makes sense out of the movie, even though it might seem impossible to do so. The Golden Age for art films was the sixties, for it was when rebellious European movies broke most of the rules of the traditional classical cinema established by Hollywood. Movies suddenly appeared without having a satisfying ending, in addition to that, the characters within the European art films would often go through a serious of events that they have no control over, and unlike in narrative fictional movies, they have no choice. In the midst of that age, a director by the name of Luis Bunuel reached his peak, and at the age of 60 through 70, he directed probably the greatest surreal European art films of all time, for he is to art films what Hitchcock is to suspense movies. 

In 1962, Bunuel directed probably his most analyzed and controversial movie, “The Exterminating Angel”. The plot revolves around a dinner party that takes place in a mansion. At the beginning of the party the servants escape for no apparent reason leaving only the head servant to serve the guests. Later on the guests arrive and even though they have finished eating knowing it is time to leave, they cannot get themselves to leave the salon. Bunuel does not use a score for the movie; for he doesn’t need it in this particular movie because it would not serve any purpose. As for mise-en-scene, the only aspect that seems consistant throughout the movie is the surreal environment. There isn’t just one true explanation or meaning to the movie, for each and everyone will most probably interpret it differently. The following argument is not fact or truth behind the movie; for it is simply a series of interpretations, that one viewer (me) went through during and after watching the movie a few times.

The first reaction was that the entire movie was part of a dream; however, this could not possibly be true because even though the surreal aspects in the movie convey the feeling of experiencing a dream, it could not possibly be one since it isn’t told through the perspective of one character. It’s more like a presentation of surrealistic events taking place within a salon. The second affect it may have on a viewer is from a religious point of view. The title of the movie, refers to the exterminating angel who killed the first born child of Egypt, and so in order to make some sense of the movie, one could consider the fact that same angel may be punishing those high class guests. The exterminating angel does so by trapping them in an environment that forces them to deal with reality. Therefore, they snap out of their trapped world of mannerism. The angel punishes two lovers for having sexual intercourse in a small room with angel pictures displayed on the wallpapers by forcing them to commit suicide. At the same time, he forces the guests outside of the room to go through barbaric like behavior to show them the harsh reality of our human nature. After they escape, the guests end up trapped once again in a church, which implies that the angel now wants them to break free of their religious habits now that he succeded at breaking hem free of their high class manners.  In both, the salon and church traps, the angel sends them sheep so they could eat and survive. Both location are perfect for the angel’s tasks. Luis Bunuel was probably attacking both the high class of society and religion. The first viewing of, “The Exterminating Angel” is a very challenging one, and it is almost impossible for the viewer to understand the full meaning, still by concentrating on the details within the movie, one can at least interpret a meaning to the movie, even though it might not necessarily make sense.

    
Luis Bunuel movies are timeless in the sense that they force the average movie goer to think for a change. Instead of feeding the audience a basic story, Bunuel allows us as the audience to figure it out on our own leaving an impression that may last for hours after the movie’s credits have rolled. With “The Exterminating Angel”, the viewers are lucky enough to receive a statement by the director at the beginning of the movie. Therefore using that statement as a guide to make sense of the movie would be a very wise choice. The statement reads as follows “The best explanation of this film is that, from the standpoint of pure reason, there is no explanation.” He also warns that the some might find the movie “disturbing”, and that it may not make sense at all. Besides the obvious message of Bunuel, that there shouldn’t be a reason for anything happening and his obvious destruction of casuality where cause and effect is not a feature in his movie, Bunuel might have given the viewer a hint to understanding the movie through his opening statement. He mentions that the movie might not make sense, that viewers may find it “disturbing”, and that “from the standpoint of pure reason, there is no explanation”. Maybe Bunuel was trying to show that through picture and sound he expressed the strange and unexplainable aspects of life, the very things that we find “disturbing” and have “no explanation” for. There are two scenes where the dinner guests arrive, so they basically arrive twice in the movie, which might be considered a presentation of deja-vu by Bunuel better yet maybe he was touching on the whole history repeats itself concept. Either way, both fit into the categories of “disturbing” and are also one of the aspects of life that we have “no explanation” for. The movie is full of such material that made me think Bunuel’s movie may be symbolizing life; for life is like a salon, there is no escaping it.

Within that salon all kinds of disturbing and unexplainable incidents occur. One unexplainable behavior of our human nature is why people commit suicide, presented to us through the two lovers who commit suicide in a small room. The concept of dreaming is another thing that has no logic explanation, and Bunuel again touches upon it through the scene where a girl dreams and stabs a young woman’s hand while sleepwalking. In the repeated scenes where all the guests go to sleep, Bunuel might have also tried to express that at the end of the day, we all just go to sleep and accept the day as it was. Another unexplainable question is why people often choose to solve their problems using violence whether it’s war between two countries or a duel between two characters. The attraction humans tend to have towards violence is also evident  in the scene where the guests gather around the two dead lovers as a crowd trying to get a peak at what happened. The fact that at a time of crisis human beings tend to forget about manners and turn against each other is shown in the scene involving water  desperatley accessed through one of the pipes in a wall. These scenes all fit under the category of the unexplainable aspects of life and human behavior.

     The movie is definitely a study of human behavior in the sense that it includes a variety of characters with different characteristics, the judging ones, the perverted guy who tries to sexually abuse a woman in her sleep, a whiny childish man who still can’t let go of his mother, the two men who are addicted to gossip and talk about a girl who they assume is a virgin, the dying woman who looks forward to death, the list goes on and on.  Through those characters, Bunuel displays the negative aspects that are present in almost every society. In less than two hours, Luis Bunuel managed to touch all those various unexplainable and disturbing aspects of life, human behavior, and society. Throughout the duration and stay within the salon, a sense of a lifetime is conveyed, for just like by the end of most people’s lives, by the end of the guest’s stay inside the salon, the people are looking forward to death, one of them even yells “Doctor, why don’t you kill me already!” As the guests are finally able to leave the salon or “life”, a light appears at the outside of the building, just like “the light that we are supposed to see before death”, and the guests are back to reality. In the streets, soldiers are hitting rebels and the crowd, which was another subliminal message in the movie. Spain was probably under strict military rule and a closed society during that time, and the people were controlled by the military just like the guests were controlled by the salon being unable to leave. The entire movie is filled with unexpected events taking place, just like in reality, life is full of events that occur out of nowhere. We don’t know why they happen, they just do for no apparent reason. There’s only one cause and effect in the movie, the plot or material displayed on screen and the effect it has on the viewer. Luis Bunuel created a work of art with his masterpiece, “The Exterminating Angel”. It shouldn’t only be regarded as one of the greatest foreign movies or art films of all time, but one of the greatest movies period. Each viewing might cause an entirely different interpretation from the previous viewing, which is why the movie stand the test of time as a timeless masterpiece that demands to be viewed repeatedly.