Movies - The Others

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	Movies - The Others

The Others is a 2001 psychological thriller film by the Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar, starring Nicole Kidman. In the U.S. it was rated PG-13 for thematic elements and frightening moments and runs around 100 minutes.

It won eight Goya Awards including awards for Best Film and Best Director. This was the first film ever to receive the Best Film Award at the Goyas (Spain's national film awards) with not a single word of Spanish spoken in it.

Opening

The film is set on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands, in 1945, just after the end of the Nazi occupation in World War II. Grace Stewart, the wife of Charles Stewart (a soldier away at war), fears for the safety of Anne and Nicholas (her two photosensitive children) as the house grows increasingly isolated, and has a complex set of rules for their protection.

The new arrival of three servants at the house (an aging nanny, an elderly gardener, and a young mute girl) begins to break these rules to strange consequences, and Grace begins to fear that they are not alone.

Anne draws pictures of a man and a woman, a boy called Victor and a scary old woman who she says has been in the house. A piano plays when no one is in the locked room.

Grace is strict and follows the Bible closely. She tries hunting down the 'intruders' with a shotgun but cannot find them. She scolds her daughter for nonsense about ghosts until she hears them herself. Fearing she is having another "crazy" episode she runs out in the fog to get the local priest to bless the house.

Out in the forest, Grace discovers Charles, wandering on his way home, and brings him back to the house. However, he is distant, lonely, and stunned when Anne makes allegations about things her mother did to her. After spending one night in Grace's bed, Charles leaves again.

Meanwhile, the servants - led by the aging Bertha Mills - are clearly up to something of their own. The gardner buries three gravestones under autumn leaves, and Mrs. Mills listens faithfully to Anne's allegations against her mother.

After Charles leaves, and the children continue seeing things - including "Victor"'s whole family, and a scary old woman, Grace breaks down to Mrs. Mills. Mrs. Mills claims that "sometimes the world of the dead gets mixed up with the world of the living". The two women also find and examine a 'book of the dead', which shows photographs taken in the 19th century of recently deceased corpses.

One morning, Grace wakes to the children's screams: all of the curtains in the house have been removed, and are missing. When the servants refuse to help look for them, Grace realizes that they are somehow involved. Hiding the children from the light, she banishes the servants from the house.

That night, Anne and Nicholas sneak out of the house and find the hidden graves, which they discover belong to the servants. The servants, or rather ghosts of the servants, appear and give chase to the children, who make it back into the house just as Grace emerges to hold off the servants with a shotgun. The children run upstairs where they hide, but are found by the strange old woman.

Downstairs, the servants continue talking to Grace, telling her that they have to learn to live together. She begins to understand what they mean.

Upstairs, Anne and Nicholas discover the old woman is acting as a medium in a séance with Victor's parents. It is then that they learn the awful truth: the old woman is not dead. Neither are Victor's parents. Instead, Anne and Nicholas are dead, as are their parents. After Grace supernaturally attacks the visitors, she breaks down with the children and remembers what happened just before the arrival of their new servants. Increasingly frustrated by her children, Grace smothered them both with a pillow and then - realizing what she had done - shot herself. When she awoke, she assumed that God had granted her family a miracle.

Mrs. Mills appears and informs Grace that they will learn to get along, and sometimes they won't even notice the living people who inhabit their house.

Outside, Victor's family - less than happy with their haunted house - pack up and move out. From the window, Grace and her children watch as they drive away. Grace ends the film with the line that "this house is ours."

Cast

Nicole Kidman
, Grace Stewart
Fionnula Flanagan
, Mrs. Bertha Mills
Christopher Eccleston
, Charles Stewart
Alakina Mann, Anne Stewart
James Bentley, Nicholas Stewart
Eric Sykes
, Mr. Edmund Tuttle
Elaine Cassidy
, Lydia
Renée Asherson, Old lady
Gordon Reid, Assistant
Keith Allen
, Mr. Marlish
Michelle Fairley, Mrs. Marlish
Alexander Vince, Victor Marlish

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