The Others (2001 film)

The Others

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Alejandro Amenábar
Produced by
Written by Alejandro Amenábar
Starring
Music by Alejandro Amenábar
Cinematography Javier Aguirresarobe
Edited by Nacho Ruiz Capillas
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release date
  • August 10, 2001 (2001-08-10) (US)
  • September 7, 2001 (2001-09-07) (Spain)
  • September 14, 2001 (2001-09-14) (Italy)
  • December 26, 2001 (2001-12-26) (France)
Running time
 104 minutes[1]
Country
  • Spain
  • United States
  • France
  • Italy
Language
  • English
  • French
Budget $17 million[2]
Box office $209.9 million[2]

The Others (Spanish: Los Otros) is a 2001 Spanish-American supernatural gothic horror film with elements of psychological horror. It was written, directed, and scored by Alejandro Amenábar. It stars Nicole Kidman and Fionnula Flanagan.

The film won eight Goya Awards, including awards for Best Film and Best Director. This was the first English-language film ever to receive the Best Film Award at the Goyas (Spain's national film awards), without a single word of Spanish spoken in it. The Others was nominated for six Saturn Awards including Best Director and Best Writing for Amenábar and Best Performance by a Younger Actor for Alakina Mann,[3] and won three: Best Horror Film, Best Actress for Kidman and Best Supporting Actress for Fionnula Flanagan. Kidman was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Drama and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, with Amenábar being nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay, a rare occurrence for a horror film.

Plot

Grace Stewart (Nicole Kidman) is a devout Roman Catholic mother who lives with her two young children in a remote country house in the British Crown Dependency of Jersey, The Channel Islands in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley), have an uncommon disease, Xeroderma Pigmentosum characterized by photosensitivity, so the curtains are closed and doors are shut to protect them from inadvertent exposure to sunlight. Three new servants arrive at the house — the aging Mrs. Bertha Mills (Fionnula Flanagan), elderly gardener Edmund Tuttle (Eric Sykes), and a mute girl named Lydia (Elaine Cassidy). Mills explains that she had previously worked in the house many years ago. Grace claims that her last servants left the house without collecting their last pay check, but Anne mentions discreetly to Mills that after the departure of the last servants, 'mummy went mad'. Her brother Nicholas however fails to agree and argues that 'nothing happened'. Grace explains to Mrs Mills that she does not believe in stories such as ghosts and requests Mrs Mills not to trust everything that the children say to her.

A number of odd events begin to occur at the house, and Grace begins to fear there are unknown others present. Anne claims to have seen a group of four people in the house several times: a man, woman, an old woman and a child called Victor, who have claimed that 'the house is theirs' and threatened to take down the curtains. When Grace investigates a bedroom where she has heard footsteps, she hears disembodied voices and feels someone exit the room. Anne claims that they all brushed past her and scattered in various parts of the house and Grace orders the house to be searched. Grace finds a 19th-century "book of the dead", an album of mourning portrait photos of deceased family members from a previous generation, with some missing pages. Later she asks Mrs Mills about when she last worked in the house. Mrs Mills explains that her previous employers in the house moved to England and they were evacuated due to the tuberculosis outbreak.

In the middle of the night, Grace witnesses supernatural events involving the piano playing itself. She is then convinced that the house may be haunted which Mrs Mills strengthens with the idea that the world of the dead does get mixed up with the world of the living. Convinced that something unholy is in the house, she runs out into the fog in search of the local priest to bless the house. Before leaving anyway, Grace instructs Mr Tuttle to check the grounds for gravestones as she remembers that there was a small cemetery in the garden and to see if there was a family buried there who had a little boy named Victor. Meanwhile, Mr. Tuttle is covering gravestones under autumn leaves, under the orders of Mrs Mills, who comments 'Now she thinks the house is haunted'.

Outside, Grace discovers her husband Charles (Christopher Eccleston), whom she thought had been killed in the war, and brings him back to the house. He greets his children after a long period of absence. Charles is distant during the short time he spends there, and Mrs. Mills says, "I do not think he knows where he is." At the dinner table, Anne mentions the 'intruders' again and is sent away from the table by Grace. Mrs Mills tells Anne that she believes in Anne's stories and that one day, Grace will see the intruders too and that there are going to be some 'big surprises' soon. She speaks to Mr Tuttle about how now Grace is acting as if nothing has happened and that she does not feel that her husband 'suspects a thing'.

Anne sings whilst wearing her first holy communion dress. When Grace finds her, she has a vision of an elderly looking woman in the dress and attacks her. However, she finds that she has actually attacked her daughter when she rips off the veil. Anne brands Grace as wicked and retreats back to her father. Mrs. Mills tells Grace to calm down and that she knows what needs to be done, to which Grace takes offence. Later, Charles asks Grace what happened 'that day'. Grace claims that she doesn't know but recalls that the servants left without giving notice and without her husband there, she could not leave the house and she did not know what came over her. Anne tells Nicholas that Grace went mad, the way that she did 'that day', Nicholas denies recollection of that day. Charles says he must leave for the front even though Grace claims that the war is now over. She tells Charles that she thinks that Charles wanted to leave her. Charles weeps as he hears this and they have sex. The next morning Grace wakes to find him gone again.

That same morning, the children wake up screaming as all the curtains have disappeared. Grace moves them into a room covered with a blanket and blocks out the light with a large blackboard. Grace accuses the servants of removing them and banishes them from the house. After leaving, an annoyed Mrs Mills asks Mr Tuttle to start to uncover the gravestones. That night, as Grace searches the house for the curtains, Anne and Nicholas sneak outside to find their father. Anne discovers the graveyard, which the servants have uncovered, and realizes that these are, in fact, the servants' graves. At the same time, Grace finds a torn out photograph from the book of the dead and is horrified to see it is of the three servants. The servants appear and try to speak to the children who run away from them back into the house. Grace locks herself and the children in the house and tells the children to hide upstairs in the bedroom together. From outside, Mrs Mills reveals that the three servants died of tuberculosis more than 50 years ago and that she has been trying to explain to her about the new situation in the house and that the living and the dead should learn to live together. Grace pleads for them to leave them in peace. Mrs Mills asks what will she do about the intruders that are in the house with them who took down the curtains and that sooner or later they will find them as they are waiting for them. Hearing the children scream upstairs as they face one of the intruders, previously described as an elderly lady, Mrs Mills tells Grace to go upstairs and talk to the intruders.

Grace walks upstairs to the bedroom with her rosary beads muttering the Lord's prayer. There, she discovers that the old woman whom Anne had described is acting as a medium in a séance with Victor's parents, talking to Anne. The medium asks the children to speak to her. She asks what happened to Anne and Nicholas. As the children answer, their answers are written down which is read out by another gentlemen. It is revealed that the children were killed by their mother by being smothered by a pillow (i.e. the day 'mummy went mad'). The children, shocked by the revelation that they are now deceased, begin to scream that they are not dead. In a frenzy of denial, Grace shakes the séance table, and rips the papers on which the medium has been writing. Victor's family sees only the table shaking and the paper being ripped. In using this supernatural incident as proof that they are not welcome in the house and should leave, Victor's mother convinces her husband to leave this house with their son, which he agrees to do.

Grace and the children huddle together in shock in the darkened school room, her memories return to her: stricken with grief for her missing husband, isolated by the children's condition and the servants leaving her, Grace lost her mind and smothered her children with a pillow. Realizing what she had done, she shot herself. When she then "awoke" and heard her children's laughter, she assumed God had granted her family a second chance at life. Grace questions where they are now if not alive. Mrs Mills explains that this is exactly what Lydia said when she realised that she and the servants had died; after which, out of shock, she never spoke in the afterlife again. Anne asks if they are in Limbo; Grace is no longer sure despite her Catholic teachings.

Mrs. Mills tells Grace that they will learn to get along with the intruders who periodically come to the house, that sometimes they will notice them and sometimes they will not. The children find they are no longer photosensitive (as they are no longer living), and for the first time, they can enjoy playing in the sunlight. Victor's family, unable to rid the house of its former occupants' spirits, drive away as Grace and the children watch. Although the property is again put up for sale, Grace and the children are firm that "this house is ours," and "no one can make us leave this house."

Cast

Production

The production crew visited Penshurst Place in Kent to film at the Lime Walk in the gardens. The Lime Walk was used in the scene where Grace Stewart (Nicole Kidman) went looking for a priest in the thick fog and instead met her husband who had returned from the war.[4] Filming locations are among other spots Las Fraguas, Cantabria, northern (Spain) and in Madrid.

Release

Box office

The Others was released August 10, 2001 in 1,678 theaters in the United States and Canada and grossed $14 million its opening weekend, ranking fourth at the box office. It stayed in fourth for three more weeks, expanding to more theaters. During the weekend of September 21–23, it was second at the box office, grossing $5 million in 2,801 theaters.[5] The film, which cost $17 million to produce, eventually grossed $96.5 million in the United States and Canada and $113.4 million in other countries, for a worldwide total gross of $209.9 million.[2]

Critical reception

Many critics praised the performances of the stars especially Nicole Kidman as Grace Stewart. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 83% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 148 reviews; the website's consensus stated "The Others is a spooky thriller that reminds us that a movie doesn't need expensive special effects to be creepy."[6] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 74 out of 100, based on 29 reviews.[7] Roger Ebert gave the film two and a half stars out of four, praising that "...Alejandro Amenábar has the patience to create a languorous, dreamy atmosphere, and Nicole Kidman succeeds in convincing us that she is a normal person in a disturbing situation and not just a standard-issue horror movie hysteric." However, he noted that "in drawing out his effects, Amenábar is a little too confident that style can substitute for substance."[8]

William Skidelsky of The Observer has suggested that it was inspired by the 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw.[9]

Accolades

See also

References

  1. ↑ "THE OTHERS (12)". British Board of Film Classification. September 4, 2001. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 "The Others (2001)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2007-10-26.
  3. ↑ The MovieWeb Team (June 13, 2002). "The 2001 Saturn Awards". MovieWeb.
  4. ↑ Kent Film Office (17 March 2001). "Filmed in Kent: The Others (2001)". Retrieved 2014-12-12.
  5. ↑ "The Others (2001) - Weekend Box Office". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2007-10-26.
  6. ↑ "The Others - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2007-10-26.
  7. ↑ "Others, The (2001): Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 2007-10-26.
  8. ↑ "The Others (2001)". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 28 April 2010.
  9. ↑ Skidelsky, Will. "Classics corner: The Turn of the Screw," The Observer (29 May 2010).
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