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		English: Listening to Cinema

	Introduction to...


THE OTHERS (2001) Written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar
	Mysterious noises coming from empty rooms; the threat of something, anything, suddenly popping out of the dark--these are the simple, primal fears that are still able to unnerve even as one moves from childhood into adulthood. This fact may have been lost on effects-happy Hollywood, but thankfully it hasn't been lost on Spanish writer-director Alejandro Amenábar, whose English-language debut "The Others" packs a formidable fright simply through the time-tested special effect of atmosphere

	Everybody likes a good ghost story, and that's exactly what The Others is. Grace (Nicole Kidman), a cold inscrutable woman apparently devoid of humour, lives in a big and scary old secluded island mansion off the coast of England in 1945 with her two children Anne and Nicholas during World War II. The children suffer from photosensitivity: too much exposure to light will cause them to break out in rashes, eventually killing them. Thus, Grace has a set of rules for the new housekeepers she is hiring. The curtains must be drawn in a room before the children are allowed to enter it, and the doors must be shut and locked at all times to prevent any stray light from entering any of the rooms.

	The scariest parts of this movie have no music, no special effects, no bleeding walls, rattling furniture, claps of thunder or flashes of lightning. The scariest parts of this movie consist, quite simply, of Grace and her two children becoming frightened out of their wits by the very presence of unseen spirits that have come to occupy their home.

	It’s hard to like Grace, and that’s a bold move for such a film, since Grace is clearly our conduit through the story. Grace’s defiant, assured daughter Anne begins to see ‘the others’, ghosts who seem to manifest only to her, and their intent appears malicious. Grace, initially dismissive, comes to experience their presence as well. Is this hysteria a sort of insanity come upon Grace inspired by the loss of her husband Charles? Is Anne playing games to get back at her dour, icy mother? Does Mrs. Mills, the newly hired housekeeper, know more than she’s letting on? The Others keeps you guessing, speculating, anticipating in a perfectly judged rhythm of genuine tension and escalating hysteria.

	That the audience feels scared right along with Grace and her children is not a testament to Hollywood technical wizardry than to Amenábar's masterful command of filmmaking. The chilling suspense of "The Others" is all the more impressive considering how a number of his ideas are fairly simple. For instance, the children's photosensitive condition means that most of the film plays out in dimly lit--and hence rather creepy--spaces, not to mention having light be a source of danger is a clever twist. Even seemingly small details have their rewards; case in point, Grace's insistence on there being absolute silence whenever possible--making any spontaneous jolts even more unsettling.

	In addition to directing the film, Amenábar has fashioned a razor-sharp script built around the belief that hooking your audience requires a measure of restraint. There’s no cheap shocks, “ghost cam” point-of-view shots, or gut-punch violence, just a slow-burn narrative that builds the tension to breaking point without ever becoming too leisurely. Certain scenes are genuinely unsettling (a book of unusual photographs is extremely disturbing), and by the time the climax arrives you may just find yourself experiencing the kind of gut-churning fear that very few fictional creations are capable of eliciting.

	Much of the strength of the film comes from Amenabar’s concentration to these characters, shaping and developing them as the backbone of his film. Grace, Mrs. Mills and Anne are strong, fascinating creations. They are women at distinct stages of development: Anne, just awakening, learning, noticing, whilst her mother has had greater life experience, her rigid existence an attempt to keep calamity at bay. Bertha Mills, though, has been around the block, and her calm demeanour suggests she is the one in control, and her faint contempt for Grace is barely disguised. It is the triumvirate of knowledge – the one who questions, the one who denies, the one who knows, that makes The Others so interesting. The interplay between these characters, and their various stages of comprehension and understanding, coupled with the blurry motivations which propels each woman to behave as she does keeps the audience on their toes, trying to second guess the twisting narrative.

	The undercurrent of sexuality, and the religious implications the film explores makes this thriller fascinating and intricate in design and execution. The Others is gloriously lit and shot; gas lamps are pretty much the rule, and the one moment when the sun streams into the house it seems rude and out of place. The fog that shrouds the house lifts the eerie quotient, and the sound of footsteps becomes less the comforting sound of children playing, and more the potential violence of the Others coming to wreak havoc.

	This is a skillful, masterful film, one that rejoices and plays with a long forgotten genre, and to see its return is one of the great joys of The Others. It takes itself seriously, and works hard at building suspense, dropping clues and red herrings that rope you in and lock you in the house with the characters. It seems old fashioned, and probably is, but the film works and succeeds in eliciting not just our engagement, but our commitment to the mystery and the characters.

	The Others manages to balance fine performances and a taut, compelling script under Amenabar’s capable direction. This is a thriller that takes its time, and aims for mood over special effects. This return to the female Gothic is a welcome reminder of those great films of the past, by creating something so well crafted for contemporary audiences. The Others is great fun, beautifully acted, and directed by an expert. It takes a film like this to make you forget all the tripe and embrace the power of cinema to delight, thrill and invigorate simply through its tight direction and the rejection of cheap, absurd effects for a welcome concentration on building character and the pleasures of carefully escalating tension

		Modification of composite reviews by Michæl Dequina, Jeffrey Chen, Mark Freeman, Andrew Howe and MaryAnn Johanson