"The Others" movie

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She thought he gave her a second chance. That’s partly why she was in denial about being dead and a ghost. She says so in the film.
 
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Well, I don’t remember that. I watched the picture twice, on first release and then again a year or two later, but never again since then. So it’s now fifteen years or more since I last saw it. If it had been the director’s intention to lay heavy emphasis on the Catholic content, I think I would have remembered that. In Sixth Sense, too, there are scenes set in a church, but I don’t think we’re meant to take any religious message home with us from the theater. They’re both ghost stories, that’s all.
 
Yes, I read it like that too. She is vaguely aware of something traumatic occuring involving her and the children, but there is definitely a sense of her behaving as though she has sidestepped the consequences of something she doesn’t fully acknowledge.

I think the Catholicism in the film is fascinating as a plot device. I wouldn’t base my conversion off it though! I think the mother uses the Faith in many ways to give her a sense of control in a difficult situation. It is a firm point in her life, and her grasp on it means she has a bit of a fractious relationship with her daughter, who clearly has questions that her mother cannot answer.
The mother is very concerned about seeing the priest and her distress is related to him not visiting. When she finds out the truth at the end, it’s interesting how quickly her firm grasp of her faith shifts to a firm determination that the house is theirs.
 
Grace: “At first I couldn’t understand what the pillows where doing in my hands and why you didn’t move, but then I knew, it had happened, I killed my children. I got the rifle, I put it to my forehead and I pulled the trigger, nothing, and I heard your laughter in the bedroom, you were playing with the pillows as if nothing had happened, and I thought the Lord and his great mercy was giving me another chance, tell them, don’t give up, be strong, be a good mother but now, but now what does this all mean? Where are we”?
 
Spoiler alert

You evidently attach great importance to this line of dialogue, which I simply don’t remember after all these years. From what you say, I deduce it must be part of the climax of the movie. In The Others, as also in Sixth Sense, the key to the whole story line is that the central character doesn’t realize he/she is a ghost until something suddenly happens that opens his/her eyes, and (ideally) opens the audience’s eyes too, at the same moment. The exact nature of the plot twist that brings the character to this sudden realization is secondary. I don’t remember exactly what the twist is in Sixth Sense, either. Do you?
 
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The psychiatrist is dead. He was killed by a patient. The patient also had a sixth sense, but the doctor didn’t comprehend that was his problem. He helps the little boy and is redeemed. He is also able to say goodbye to his wife. The little boy is in turn freed from his terror and learns to use his “gift” to help the unfortunate spirits.
 
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I liked the movie. Nicole was good for the role of the mother since she is Catholic in real life. I liked how Catholicism had a part in the plot.
 
I really don’t know, and I imagine this is where the theological aspect to the plot is less clear and more speculative.

As a personal guess, I took it that the mist around the house was some kind of manifestation of whatever realm they were actually in, and that spoiler Christopher Eccleston’s visit to them was some sort of brief reprieve for them all before he went back to whatever afterlife he was doomed to.

I suppose what I mean is that the Catholic Faith was a useful plot element to explain Nicole Kidman’s choices and behaviour, but it wasn’t actually the worldview presented by the movie as a whole. So, I don’t think they ended up in limbo, or purgatory, I think they all ended in some unspecified afterlife with no particular reference to God at all.
 
I saw the movie and thought it was pretty good. I thought the family was high church C of E, though. My kind of people. 😉
 
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No, they were definitely Roman Catholic. She mentions Limbo and carries a rosary.
 
Both of which a high church Anglican in the 1940s would do. I thought their prayers sounded like something from the Book of Common Prayer. But it’s fiction, likely the writers hadn’t even thought that through.
 
She’s Catholic. I spent time in a Anglo-Catholic church. The family was not Anglican.
 
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The Others is written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar, who is Chilean-Spanish by origin. He comes from a Catholic culture. Once he had decided that he wanted to put religious beliefs and observances into his movie, I think we would expect him to portray the Catholic faith rather than any other.
 
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Ohhhhhh, loved it! One of my favorite movies. I liked how it shown that Catholicism is a lifestyle, a way of living, not just something only for Sunday morning.
 
glencor63 said:
The mother, children, and servants are dead.
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Gaaah. Spoilers. 🤣🤣🤣

(I’ve seen it, so no shock to me - but I wish I’d had a picture of my face when I figured that out!)

I like psychological horror, and this was definitely rife with it.
 
Some of my favorite classic ghost stories: The Uninvited (1945), The Haunting (1963), The Innocents (1963), The Changeling (1980), The Shining (1980), The Others (2001), The Devils Backbone (2001),The Legend of Hell House (1973), the Orphanage (2007), and the Awakening (2011), just some of the better classics.
 
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I LOVE The Uninvited. Yes, the original!

I still jump when those double doors fly open of their own accord!

And The Shining still scares me to death. Love it.
 
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BartholomewB said:
I don’t remember exactly what the twist is in Sixth Sense, either. Do you?
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Do you mean when we/the doctor realizes it? It’s when his wife drops his wedding ring. Then the film employs a flashback for those of us slow on the uptake. 😅
 
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