Coming to terms with one's death: Amenabar's the Others

Rating: 8/10 (28 March 2006)

The third of Amenabar's features is both the most academic and the most intriguing of this trilogy of the macabre. Before next step, the critically-acclaimed Mar Adentro, the three films were a comment about death, in one form or the other. The Others tells of a family, settled in post-war Jersey, consisting of Grace(Nicole Kidman) and her two children. They were abandoned by all: the domestics have gone, the husband went to the war and never came back, and the whole island seems to be deserted, apart from three servants who one day present themselves at the door, and a strange, ghostly presence in the house... Thus taking the shape of a very classic ghost story, with plenty of creepy scenes, based on an interestingly spooky setting, the film is a success thanks to the incredible sense of timing of all concerned, Director-writer-composer Amenabar first of all, since he manages to direct his 7-or-so actors as if they were puppets while allowing them to use their talent in the construction of lovable, believable characters. This last effort is probably the most rewarding of all, since one of the most annoying drawbacks of Amenabar's Open Your Eyes, his previous effort, was the incapacity of both the director and the actor(Eduardo Noriega) to make the character sympathetic, or just nice(the same could be said, however, of Tom Cruise's over-the-top characterization in the remake by Cameron Crowe)... But despite Nicole Kidman's efforts to render Grace neurotic, obsessive, authoritarian and narrow-minded, we still care for her. She has, after all, good reasons to her behavior: her children live, and share with her, an incredible everyday hell, suffering from an incurable disease making them allergic to daylight: this is the source of multiple compulsory tasks: opening doors, closing curtains, lighting candles, that are repeated throughout the film by the main character so as to avoid contact of her children and too much light... No wonder she got to be on the edge. Besides, we learn at one point how mad she got prior to the beginning of the plot, and her killing her children and shooting herself becomes almost understandable. Another important innovation over the previous effort is the confrontation of Kidman with Fionnula Flanagan as Mrs Mills, who steals the show more than once with her mineral presence and her masterful acting that makes her both lovable and mysterious. Add to this the very solid composition by Alakina Mann as Ann, Grace's daughter, and we have a very engaging cast, that contributes significantly to the success of the film. The entire plot revolves around the final discovery that the three characters are ghosts, and the presence they felt in the house(The Others)is that of the living, not of the dead. This idea allows Amenabar to toy with an Innocents-like mood all the way through, going as far as to quote one of the most frightening moments of Clayton's film around the end, when three ghosts approach a window. This shot, by the way, is also reminiscent of a famous sequence in Tod Browning's Mark of the Vampire(1936), thus we can safely think that the young Spanish master knows his history of Creepy Classics... But the most satisfactory aspect of this film, in spite of its very entertaining use of mystery and the author's mastery of direction, writing AND music, making Amenabar the full author of the film, is certainly first the way he deals with his favorite theme, having Grace slowly, but surely dealing with her own death and that of her children and accepting the fact as relief, thus going one step further than Cesar in Open your Eyes; and secondly, of course, the parallel that the viewer can establish between Grace's obsessive Catholicism and Amenabar's identity as a Spanish author, who grew up in an obsessively catholic environment. This can't be a coincidence, and Amenabar's wit(Grace, about the book of the dead: "How could these people be so superstitious?")shows he has probably come to terms with what might be part of an identity crisis. Again, the torment of Cesar, in Open..., had him begin to realize he was in such a crisis; so The Others really cleared the way for Almenabar's next step, Mar Adentro, the film that looks death in the eyes.