The Others

Nicole Kidman gives a riveting performance in The Others, a reverse ghost story.  I say reverse because the movie is told from the perspective of ghosts that don’t know they are dead. The deaths of Grace, played by Kidman, and her two children, Nicholas and Anne, are too traumatic for their minds to process and they lived their lives as they always have.

When evidence of “hauntings” begins, Grace discounts them. She is convinced there are intruders in the house and, of course, she doesn’t listen to her daughter who tells her about Victor and the old lady prowling the house. Things start to move, curtains disappear, and Grace begins to believe the servants are involved. In a way, they are. The servants died many years ago and will do all they can to keep the house to themselves and not allow living people to move in. Of course, the viewer doesn’t get to learn this fact until closer to the end of the movie.

The plot follows Grace’s mental breakdown, much like The Shining with Jack Torrance, but the twist is that she already had the ultimate breakdown, one that led her to smother her children and kill herself. The breakdown as Grace fights to protect her children from unseen intruders is no less riveting considering the actions she has already taken. The fights with Anne, the desperation to keep them safe from their sun allergy and Nicholas’ fear of being alone, and the unsettling dispositions of the servants all set the mood perfectly for the shocking revelation that Grace and the children are haunting their own home, and the “intruders” are those that have moved into the home.

The revelation at the end that Grace murdered her children and then killed herself was shocking. Nothing in  her actions lead one to believe she would go to such excessive means to deal with the loss of her husband and the overwhelming fear and stress of being a single mother. The only clue is Anne’s anger with her mother, clear from early in the movie. The ending scene where Grace and the children stand looking out at the fleeing humans as mist rolls in to close them in to the home is chilling, and it sums up Grace’s overwhelming loneliness in one perfect shot.

The Shining

What hasn’t been said about The Shining? Though this is a wonderful ghost story, that is not my favorite aspects of this novel. Jack’s descent into madness, the slow etching away at his humanity, is what has drawn me to this work for years. Jack begins as a desperate man trying to rebuild his life after he has destroyed his opportunities with temper and drink. He is doing his best to keep himself and his family together, but his addiction and the violence witnessed and endured at his father’s hands have etched into his psyche leaving a deep scar the hotel was able to wedge itself into.

And that is what the novel is about. The haunted hotel and the endless party are tools used to tear Jack down one small hurt at a time. With unerring aim, the hotel finds every doubt, every imagined slight Jack has endured and it enhances them. Jack’s insecurities become an easy playground for the hotel, and it uses his guilt against him at every turn. The attack on the stuttering boy from the debate team, Danny’s broken arm, his inability to finish his play, and Wendy’s constant questioning of his decisions are wielded against Jack with extreme skill until the hotel, or his own doubts, infect him and he no longer sees reason.

As his mind deteriorates, Jack can’t tell the difference between his thoughts and the darkest reaches of his own soul, because the hotel didn’t corrupt; it merely fed on the negativity already inside Jack.  The snow isolates the Torrance family, and with each inch that piles up around the hotel, Jack delves deeper into the darkest aspects of himself. The light dims. He hyper-focuses on the history of the hotel, immersing himself in its bloody history, and he forgets the promises he made to himself. He forgets that he will never hurt Danny again, that he will never drink again, that he will no longer fail his family.

The madness takes over, and the hotel has what it wants. It takes over Jack’s physical body as its agent and is now free to act against Danny and Wendy. How much of the madness is the hotel and how much of it is Jack’s fractured mind? The story leaves that a bit ambiguous. Jack was the weak link in the chain. His mind was already touched by darkness while Wendy and Danny remained free if the taint until near the end. The peek into madness, the descent into the darkness of the human mind, is more haunting than  the ghosts in the hotel.