A political film?

Rating: Null/10 (16 January 2002)

Let me tell you my personal experience with the film. It was all too ordinary for me when I left the movie theater. I was thinking 'Yeah, it was good, Kidman was good, kids were good, and Amenabar had a good film.' I had my shopping, some other daily routines, etc. But when I was returning home, everything suddenly began to open one by one in my mind, forcing me to the conclusion that this was quite a political film as well. How come? Well, anyone familiar with the theory of postmodernism might start even from the name of the film. The concept of the "other", in fact, has been carried into the intellectual agenda by so-called 'postmodern' thinkers such as Foucault. The film marks the fragility of the establishment of a concept of 'the other', for the grounds of this very establishment cannot escape from relativism. In other words, how can you prove that in some other context, some other time and/or space, you would not be 'the other'? The postmodern criticism doesn't end here. I think the fact that the story goes through in the end of Second World War is not a mere coincidence. As you know, there is a consensus that Nazism, fascism, atomic bomb, mass massacres have been marked as the signs of the end of rationalism, a sine-qua-non of modernist way of thinking to that time. And the concept of 'light' in the film can be read as a critic of the concept of 'enlightenment'. Well, these are parts of brainstorming; but let me remind you that Amenabar's previous film had obvious traces from another postmodern thinker, Jean Baudrillard, on the concept of 'reality' and 'hyperspace'. As a summary, I have to say this is a successful film, moreover, not a mere horror film, but a political film, which could have been shot by a director that has a considerable intellectual background on the political issues I have mentioned above.