The Others: 23 years later, we still haven’t recovered from the final revelation of the film, as brilliant as it is moving

Island of Jersey, 1945. In a huge isolated Victorian house, Grace raises her two children alone. Suffering from a strange illness, they cannot be exposed to the light of day. When three new servants come to live with them, they must comply with a vital rule: the house must be constantly plunged into darkness and no door must be opened before the previous one has been closed. However, the rigorous order established by Grace will be challenged by intruders…

For a first attempt, it was a masterstroke. In 2001, Spanish-Chilean director Alejandro Amenàbar delivered his very first film shot in English: The Others. Bringing together his favorite themes such as death, childhood, solitude, illusion and acceptance, he brilliantly linked them to fantasy and a gothic aesthetic, in the service of a work whose scenario is inspired by the films The Innocents (from the novel The Turn of the Screw by Henry James) and The Devil’s House.

“If we are dead, where is the limbo?”

Cleverly distilling its effects in dribs and drabs within a terribly suffocating universe around an increasingly neurotic Grace, it is only in the last 30 minutes that Amenàbar shows his cards.

First the revelation about the very nature of the trio of servants hired by Grace to take care of the house and her children, who in reality turn out to have been dead for 50 years. We then think we have reached the possible climax of the film, and even have a small head start on the rest of the plot.

Before Amenàbar finishes us off with a twist ending revealing the true nature of Grace and her two children, and their absolutely tragic destiny. Until then, spectators identified with Grace, placed in the position of victim, and “The Others” seemed to be the Marlish family and this mysterious old woman, who wanted to invade the place like ghosts wishing to chase away intruders.

The superior power of life over death

In fact, it is Grace and her two children who are the specters who haunt the house. Neurotic, unable to bear the absence of her husband who died at war, she ended up killing her children before committing suicide in her turn.

Deeply pious, defeated by the evil that consumes her, she ultimately proved incapable of protecting them, condemning them to wander with her in limbo. This is because the Church has, for a very long time, condemned suicide.

For her, it was not recognizing the superior power of life over death. Traditionally, suicides, deprived of religious ceremony, were not buried in consecrated ground but outside the cemetery.

Miramax Films

In 2001 interviewAmenàbar returned precisely to the crucial importance of religion in his film, seeing his work as a reflection on “the way religion gives meaning to death and the concept of destiny”. In one of the film’s final shots, Grace clings to the children and the house as if she were still alive, refusing to wander like a soul damned for committing a mortal sin.

The list of films with a memorable twist ending is already long. That of Othersterrible, carrying an emotional charge that would split stones in two, climbs quietly towards the summits.