Media Assingment-The Others

To highlight the isolation and mystery of the house very long shots are taken before every major scene. The house is covered in fog which gives enhanced effect of isolation and scariness. Some shots are given in silence which can have even more impact than high build up of music. The make up of characters and the background of the movie dates back to the era after World War II. The characters were shown in an unnatural glow with shadows most of the time. The director has used orangey glow of candlelight to reflect the photosensitivity of the children which resulted in loss of track of time.

Victor and curtains: This is one of my favorite scenes where Nicholas is suddenly awakened by his sister; Ann. Nicholas is taken aback on seeing the curtains opened! He then questions Ann about it. She mentions that it is Victor one of “The others” and he has been doing this all through the night. This is a two shot scene of Ann and Nicholas. However, Nicholas does not believe Ann and thinks that she is playing a trick on him, as a scene before Ann teases Nicholas by saying he is too weak to tell their mother that she has been reading at the table. The audience sympathies with Nicholas as he is a small child, undergone this trauma. Thereafter, Ann asks Victor to come out from behind the curtains so that her “stupid brother” can see him. Heavy and quick breathing of Nicholas starts here. He suddenly turns over and the camera zooms to an extreme close up shot of Nicholas to show his fear. To add to the thought of Ann teasing him she even mentions him as ‘cowdy custard’ time and again. As the curtains open, the sound of heavy footsteps comes closer to the bed and a deeper voice complains that it’s his bed. Whereas, in reply Ann threatens of getting her mother, Grace. The camera zooms to a close up shot of Ann and audience is again made to believe that it is she, who is playing the trick. However, this is proved wrong when Victor touches Nicholas and the high pitched violins build up the music until it is cut off when he screams for help.

Wardrobe Scene: This scene is a bit frightening one. Firstly, the children come to know about the servant’s gravestones and also their mother discovers their photograph in which they are dead. Everyone rushes into the house and the mother shuts the door. She instructs the children to hide themselves and remain together. At this point there is a medium shot of Ann and then a three shot of all of them. The servants asks Grace to “understand the new situation about the house, as they will be living together with the dead.” They also told her that ‘the others’ will make a contact with them very soon. The children hide themselves in a wardrobe upstairs. A beam of light from one direction shows half lit faces of the children.  This is a close up shot of both of them. Ann hears some sound. She thinks that its Nicholas breathing like that but soon after they realize that someone else is there. There is no background music here as the director wanted to lay more stress on the dialogues and whispers to increase the intensity of the horror scene. Suddenly, somebody asks to “come with them” and in reply they scream loudly. Grace gets frightened after listening to their voice. Here it is a bird’s eye view of her.

This film is full of surprises and horrors, which when get together merge into a proper ghost story. It also had some unusual features which we haven’t seen before. It hasn’t got any blood and fighting in it. The director (Alejandro Amenabar) has got some exceptional ideas like the photosensitivity of the children, which always cut them from the rest of the world. The director has created a lot of suspense by keeping each door locked which gives an opportunity to the background music to raise its chords. Well, I do empathize with Ann as she was quite often criticized by her mother. The film has got a lot of surprises in it, which we come to know at the end. The biggest surprise was that the main characters are the ghosts and the people we think ghosts are actually the real ones. The director’s choice was really good and the characters he chose were quite suitable for the role. They did a splendid job and had given their best. This could easily be seen during the entire film. We could see the innocence of those children. The acting of the characters was a big ingredient to the success of the film. Every scene was at its right place. Each and every character had an aura on their faces, although it was a ghost story. The audience of this film is mainly the horror movie lovers, some young adults and kids above 12 years.