The Others: Chiaroscuro And Suspense

The cinema can boast hundreds of ghost films and we often get the feeling that they are all more or less the same. However, one title stands out: The Others by Alejandro Amenábar, released in theaters in 2001.

Perhaps The Others awakens a certain nostalgia, because you can appreciate the suspense and horror influences of classic cinema. In this article we aim to analyze how the film has aged 20 years after its first release and we will try to understand why it has managed to achieve so much success among audiences and critics.

Fed up with haunted houses, The Others gives us a story we’ve seen before, but from a different perspective and playing with our perception of reality.

We doubt that the content of this article will be a spoiler for most, but if you haven’t seen the movie or don’t remember the ending, better not to read to the end.

A lucky production

Alejandro Amenábar today is one of the most recognized directors on the international scene, but 20 years ago the director of Tesis (1996) and Open Your Eyes (1997) was unknown to a large part of the public, especially outside his native country, Chile. .

The Others marked a before and after in his career and became the highest-grossing Spanish production at the time. Even so, it was not without criticism and comparisons with The Sixth Sense (Shyamalan, 1999) were recurrent.

Despite the similarities with Shyamalan’s film (in reality the only similarity is the final revelation), The Others has aroused in the viewer a sensation that has not been experienced for a long time in the big theaters.

In reality, the topic is simple and could probably have been told on a smaller budget. We have seen this story on countless occasions: a house where the living coexist with the dead and the younger characters are more inclined to detect “presences”. However, in The Others it is decided to tell it from the opposite point of view: that of the dead.

It didn’t take too many actors or mind-boggling settings to tell this story. As we have already said, it would not have been difficult, from a practical point of view, to tell this same story on a much smaller budget. However, Amenábar was able to shoot his feature film as he had dreamed of, without having to skimp on expenses and granting his production every kind of luxury, with an unforgettable atmosphere that catapulted him to fame.

Tom Cruise had shown a huge interest in Amenábar’s cinema after seeing Open Your Eyes . This admiration for the Chilean director then led to the adaptation titled Vanilla Sky (2001) which Amenábar refused to direct.

But it didn’t end there because then Cruise was one of the producers of The Others . Amenábar’s only conditions were to shoot in Spain and with his team; the rest is history.

Light, one more character in The Others

While budget can be of great help when shooting a feature film like The Others , the truth is that a well-told story goes further. We can hear the same story told by different people and it will never be the same. It can make us laugh, cry or arouse indifference depending on the point of view and the voice of the narrator.

In the cinema there is no narrator who tells us the story verbally to evoke sensations in us, but everything that cannot be said in words is expressed through images.

When we think of the fantasy or horror genre, some elements come to mind including darkness. Fantastic and terrifying events usually happen at night, the time when we feel most vulnerable, most helpless, and when all of our fears emerge. Fear of the dark is usually linked to the unknown and is part of our collective imagination.

In the case of The Others , the chiaroscuro, the artificial light that evokes deep sensations and the mystical stand out. It is not for nothing that photography has been entrusted to Javier Aguirresarobe, a reference for great filmmakers, compared to directors like Stanley Kubrick.

The presence and absence of light in the film contributes to a unique atmosphere that keeps the viewer in suspense.

The contrast between light and dark

Light is usually seen as a refuge, the place where we are protected and safe. But in The Others , the opposite happens. Due to the illness of Grace’s children, the house must remain dark and it is that darkness that provides security.

This countertrend is also reflected in the final revelation: the story is not told from the point of view of the living.

Even so, the light is the bearer of truth. For this reason we always see Mrs. Mills near a lamp. Mrs. Mills is none other than the bringer of truth, the person in charge of waking Grace and her children from their slumber, of showing them reality, however hard to accept.

Although we are in a real time and place, photography gives the villa a certain aura of unreality that makes it claustrophobic. The bars and the cemetery seem to mark the border with an outside world shrouded in fog and of which we have almost no news.

No wonder, then, that the main revelations are related to light: someone pulls the curtains and, surprisingly, despite Anne and Nicholas being scared, their skin is still intact. The film draws to a close and the children contemplate the light without hurting themselves and celebrate the “healing”. Likewise, the fog disappears when the ending is discovered.

The light of The Others is not natural, it is absolutely impressionistic and envelops us in a terrifying atmosphere. Without special effects, but through camera movements and chiaroscuro, the director tells us that something strange is happening in the villa, that everyday life is threatened by a kind of intruder.

The Others: the secrets of suspense

The Others makes its intention clear already in the credits: what we will see is a macabre and fantastic tale. The film begins with a woman screaming upon awakening. Have you had a nightmare? Has something already happened and we don’t know?

Throughout the film, little Anne tells us several times that “something happened” and that this something happened before Grace’s scream. A scream that may even go unnoticed, but which the director conscientiously put in at the beginning to warn us that something terrible has just happened.

The suspense is palpable from the start and refers to great works of the past such as the novel The Turn of the Screw (Henry James, 1898) and the films of the great master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock. The mansion itself somehow evokes Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1949) and Grace is a tribute to Grace Kelly and all the frightened blondes brought to the screen by the English director.

The sense of isolation is perceived through the images, but also through Grace, who seems to want to live in a fantasy world, created by herself to evade reality. Throughout the film, we are told that Grace suffers from headaches, loves silence, and barely leaves the house.

She is trapped in her own lie which she created as a defense mechanism to avoid facing the horrible reality.

The characters: Grace and Anne

The character is also permeated by a strong religious component that evokes even more the fantastic dimension. Clinging firmly to her beliefs and able to answer any questions by sticking to the Bible , Grace does not question anything.

The paradox is that, after knowing the truth, he will not be able to find a reason in his own existence. Unlike Grace, Anne questions what is said in the Bible , even though she thinks she knows all about ghosts.

Anne is one of the characters who gives us the most clues, as she is the only one who remembers “what happened”. The character also has a mythological connotation linked to the myth of Oedipus: the rivalry with her mother is quite evident and Anne even wears a dress similar to that of a bride.

Conclusions

The Others stages the fear of facing reality, death and the lack of answers and a reason to justify one’s existence. Despite the passage of time, this film does not age and continues to be scary.

Far from stereotypical characters and exaggerated special effects, The Others is capable of evoking suspense in the most classic and effective way possible.