Mystical drama-thriller with Nicole Kidman in the title role “The Others” directed by Alejandro Amenabar. Winner of the nominations “Best Director” and “Best Film”.
What is the movie The Others about?
In the center of the plot is the life of the family during the Second World War (1945). The action takes place in Jersey, in the Channel Islands. In a huge house, remote from the city, Grace lives – the mistress of the house and the mother of two children – Nikolos and Ann, who are allergic to light. Therefore, the curtains in the house are almost always drawn, and the main rule of this place is “no door should open until the previous one is locked.”
One day, all the servants suddenly disappear in the house, and new ones come to replace them: the elderly Bertha Mills and Edmund Tuttle and the young dumb servant Lydia.
At some point, strange things begin to happen in the house: children crying from nowhere, loud noises and cruel jokes. Grace begins to think that ghosts live in their house, and one morning she goes for the priest, but thick fog does not allow the heroine to go far. He envelops her, and suddenly, Charles comes out of him – Grace’s husband, who went to war two years ago.
Inspired by an unexpected meeting, Grace leads Charles home. There he is greeted by joyful children. After spending the night with his wife, the husband tells her that he must return to the front and leaves the house again.
The children, learning about what happened, go in search of dad, and accidentally stumble upon the tombstones of their new servants. Meanwhile, Grace discovers a photograph of the dead Mrs. Mills, Lydia, and Mr. Tuttles. Then the heroine realizes that they have been working in the house for a long time, and now they are ghosts.
The meaning of the film The Others
The main idea of the film is that there are two parallel worlds – the world of the living and the world of the dead. These worlds are absolutely identical, and their inhabitants consider only their own world to be real. Grace could not even imagine that her family was dead, and that the ghosts that disturb her house are real people, and she, with children and servants, are dead.
The “dead” servant carefully prepares an equally dead family for such a strong shock. Throughout the film, the servant makes sure that the family does not get out of the house and lives the same, lively life. But this very life is lived in this house by completely different people, whom the dead consider ghosts (Anne sees the boy Michael and asks him to leave their house alone, and Michael, in turn, says the same thing to the girl).
Over time, many things become clear to the viewer, for example, why the father returned, whose hope for survival had not been for a long time, why in the morning he went back to the front (the war had already ended), why all the servants suddenly left without saying goodbye and without taking a salary and many other things that were a mystery at the beginning of the film.
The meaning of the film begins to unfold at the moment when Grace finds posthumous photos of her new servants, and the children – their tombstones near the house.
In general, the director hints to us at the essence of the film even at its beginning: a lonely house, fenced off from the outside world, around which thick fog always reigns, and where it is dark even during the day, completely personifies the afterlife with its external and internal appearance, which bears little resemblance to a place for a full-fledged life.
But there is still a bit of life in it. Children who were allergic to light during their lifetime are now invulnerable to it – they no longer need eternal twilight and long stays in a locked room. That is, we can assume that another idea of the author was the idea of starting a new life after death, in general, a pretty good life.
The meaning of the film’s ending The Others
Upon hearing Ann talking to someone on the second floor, Grace immediately goes up there. She opens the room and sees a group of people, led by an old psychic woman, sitting at a table. These people do not see either Grace or the children, and only the sorceress talks to them, asks questions and writes down the answers. To the question “what happened that day?” the children answer: “Mom has gone mad.”
The old woman tells the new tenants of the house that a family once lived in it, but one day the mother went crazy and strangled the children with a pillow, and later shot herself. At this point, the children begin to scream that they are not dead, but later all family members remember the day after which they became ghosts.
The meaning of the final is to put everything in its place and answer the remaining questions. The truth is not always one, it has several sides, and each has its own.
