13 Nights of Shocktober: The Others

 by A.J.

Night 7: Ghost Story Night

“Sometimes the world of the dead gets mixed up with the world of the living.”

The Others

Good ghost stories on film are hard to come by, especially haunted house stories. They usually end up pivoting to demons or possession/exorcism stories. It doesn’t help that any recent haunted house movie has two spectacular pillars to stand up against, each on opposite ends of the spectrum: Poltergeist (1982) on the macabre, even grotesque, special effects heavy end and The Haunting (1963) on the minimalist, atmospheric, psychological end. Spanish writer-director Alejandro Amenàbar’s The Others (2001) rests firmly and comfortably alongside The Haunting''s end of the haunted house spectrum in both the style of ghost story and its quality. 

Set on the English Channel island of Jersey at the end of the Second World War, Nicole Kidman plays Grace, an Englishwoman living in an isolated house with her children, Anne and Nicholas. She does everything she can to protect her children from sunlight because of their dangerous photosensitivity for which there is no cure (though it is not mentioned in the film, this is a real condition called Xeroderma Pigmentosum, or X.P., and before the modern era, children with this condition rarely lived to adulthood). She hires three new servants and instructs them that the curtains must be kept closed at all times and doors must be locked before another one is opened to keep the light out. But things go bump in the night and during the daytime too. The piano which Grace keeps locked up is played mysteriously at night. Anne, the oldest of the children, says she sees and talks to a boy, Victor, who says that the house belongs to his family and Anne and her family will have to leave. The servants seem suspicious, especially Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan), who is certainly keeping a secret or two from Grace. This is all typical haunted house stuff; almost by the numbers haunted house stuff. The trick director Amenàbar pulls off is staging these scenes effectively through building a foreboding gothic atmosphere. At the center of everything is Nicole Kidman’s performance; we feel her fear so a thing like seeing all of the curtains suddenly missing becomes a frightening sight. 

Anne’s drawing of the Others is appropriately creepy but also a believable child’s drawing. Grace teaching the children the grimmer parts of religion, of the different levels of hell, and a story of two child martyrs and children’s limbo adds as much to the eerie atmosphere as the perpetual fog. There is something inherently spooky about a woman holding a candle or lantern walking down a dark hallway or into a dark room. Since the house has no electricity there are several moments like this. The movie’s signature scene happens when Grace leaves Anne alone in a room wearing her communion dress then comes back and finds something wrong. In a brilliant stroke, the resolution to this scene has the camera swish pan from Kidman not to her daughter but across the room to Kidman’s reaction reflected in a mirror. My favorite scene is simple and expertly done. Grace hears loud footsteps and noises upstairs. She sees that the servants are outside and her children are not upstairs, yet the noises persist. It is a perfect blending of cinematic technique and an actor's performance that puts the audience in the mental and emotional state of the character, allowing us to feel the character’s fear and creating horror.

In the wake of The Sixth Sense it felt like every movie about the supernatural had to have a twist, whether it worked or not. Fortunately, like The Sixth Sense, the secret of The Others enhances the overall viewing experience. Everything that has happened before is cast in a new light, but, most important of all for any twist, it makes sense. The Others plays fair. Whether you guess the conclusion or have seen it before, The Others remains highly effective and very spooky.

The Others is available to stream on The Criterion Channel and Shudder. It is also available on Blu-ray/DVD from The Criterion Collection and is probably at your local library.

Best Pictures #36: 2016 (89th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee, Lion

by A.J.

Best Pictures #36: 2016 (89^th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

Lion

It’s odd that Lion is a film based on a true story, yet its premise seems familiar: a young man searches for the family he was separated from as a young boy. Yet, the events in Lion are so improbable-but-true that you can’t help but be surprised and awed at how the life its main character, Saroo Brierly, unfolded. Lion tugs at your heartstrings and stirs up emotions in all the ways you would expect and… it works. If you cry at movies, you’ll likely feel the tears flow while watching Lion and that’s okay.

There are two distinct parts to Lion. In the first half, we see little Saroo living with his mother and older brother in a poor rural village in India. His older brother, Guddu, takes random chores and odd jobs to help support their family. One night, a new job means traveling by train at night. Saroo is eager and excited to help, and Guddu reluctantly brings him along. Guddu leaves Saroo at a train station and tells him to wait while he sees about the job. Saroo falls asleep and wakes up in the middle of the night to find the train station deserted. He calls out for his brother and looks for him on an out of service train which springs into service and takes him thousands of miles away from his home.

Young Sunny Pawar, who plays Saroo as a child, is remarkably good on screen. His wide-eyed precociousness helps him survive on the streets of Calcutta where he doesn’t speak the local language and can’t pronounce the name of his hometown. He finds his way into an orphanage that seems too similar to a prison, but it is here that he is adopted by an Australian couple played by Nicole Kidman and David Wenham.

A jump in time takes us to the second part of the film. As a young man, Saroo, now played by Dev Patel, feels more Australian than Indian. He is disconnected from his Indian heritage until a chance sense memory inspires him to track down his original home and mother and brother. It is at this point that Lion treads close to cliché territory. Dev Patel has many scenes where he is moody, depressed, and conflicted about his quest. Does searching for his real mother mean he’s ungrateful to his adoptive mother? The movie seems more concerned with the mechanics of how he finds out where his childhood village in India is (with much internet research and Google Earth), than with what is going on inside of the characters. Older Saroo’s emotions, which should be driving the second half of Lion, feel more obligatory than earned. That’s not to say that when the big scenes in this movie come they don’t bring pathos. The final scenes of Lion are genuinely moving.

I wouldn’t say that Lion is an uneven film, but from a technical standpoint the best part of Lion is young Saroo’s near dialogue free journey through the streets of Calcutta. He encounters uncaring adults, seemingly kind but actually sinister adults, and journeys by foot in a direction that he hopes will take him home. Director Garth Davis keeps the camera and the audience at a distance from young Saroo, giving this sequence the feel of a documentary. Every unlikely encounter young Saroo has seems unfortunately believable. It is a piece of incredible filmmaking that the rest of Lion doesn’t equal.

Dev Patel has some good scenes of emotional dialogue with Kidman and Rooney Mara, playing his supportive girlfriend. Mara is good, as always, but doesn’t have much else to do aside from be supportive. The actors handle these scenes well—Patel and Kidman have picked up Supporting Actor and Actress Oscar nominations, respectively. It is their interactions that keep the audience engaged. This is ultimately an uplifting and heartwarming story and the sentiment doesn’t feel forced. You may feel like you’ve seen this kind of movie before, and I’m sure you have, but Lion is still worth watching.

Nominees: Iain Canning, Angie Fielder, Emile Sherman, producers

Director: Garth Davis

Screenplay: Luke Davies, based on the book A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley and Larry Buttrose

Cast: Dev Patel, Sunny Pawar, Nicole Kidman, Rooney Mara

Production Companies: See-Saw Films, Aquarius Films, Screen Australia, Sunstar Entertainment, The Weinstein Company

Distributor: The Weinstein Company, Transmission Films, Entertainment Film Distributors

Release Date: November 25^th, 2016

Total Nominations: 6, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Adapted Screenplay-Luke Davies, Supporting Actor-Dev Patel, Supporting Actress-Nicole Kidman, Cinematography-Greig Fraser, Original Score-Dustin O'Halloran, Volker Bertelmann