The Orphanage (El Orfanato)
Cuando me preguntaban de que era El Orfanato, yo decia que El Orfanato es Peter Pan, contado desde el punto de vista de la madre.-Sergio G. Sanchez, Escritor
When people asked me what The Orphanage was about, I would tell them The Orphanage is Peter Pan, told from the point of view of the mother.-Sergio G. Sanchez, Screenwriter
Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Orphanage is a haunted house story, similar in tone to The Others or The Innocents (with a hint of Bunny Lake is Missing thrown in), centered on the seclusion of a grand manor and the terrors found therein. Because this setting is so familiar in both literature and film, audiences may be wary of traveling this familiar road for yet another time, which would be a shame, since The Orphanage definitely is worth watching for its considerable merits.
Belen Rueda stars as Laura, a woman who returns to the orphanage where she spent her childhood and makes it a home for her family, husband Carlos and son Simon. From the moment they settle into the house, Simon makes friends with children that only he can see. Laura and Carlos dismiss these imaginary friends as a phase in the development of an only child. One day, during an open house celebration, Simon disappears, and the film chronicles Laura’s efforts to find her son.
The film was produced by Guillermo del Toro, and consequently has been compared to del Toro’s critically acclaimed Pan’s Labyrinth. I think this comparison is faulty, for the themes of The Orphanage bear a much stronger resemblance to The Devil’s Backbone, del Toro’s 2001 horror film about a ghostly haunting at a home for boys orphaned by the Spanish civil war. All three films dwell in the horrors of childhood, in the worlds that only children understand and only children can access.
The main difference for The Orphanage is that the child is NOT the protagonist. We see mysteries of childhood through the eyes of an adult, one who is desperate to unlock them so that she may find her child. There are beautiful poignant themes of eternal youth and never growing up, themes that are highlighted by references within the film to Peter Pan, the boy who would not grow up (in much the same way that Pan‘s Labyrinth referenced Alice in Wonderland) and to Wendy, the girl who told great stories and chose to become an adult. These references are both spoken and visual, most notably in the great window through which Peter flies in to hear Wendy’s stories, a window that has a counterpart in Laura‘s home, where Laura spends much of her time telling stories to Simon.
The film is beautifully rendered, its muted colors emphasizing the isolation and the sadness that the orphanage has seen over the years. The direction is quietly effective, as fear is built through subtlety and tension, and not through cheap, loud thrills (with one notable exception). The dark shadows of the orphanage conceal the horrors of our collective imaginations, and the great work done with darkness is a credit to cinematographer.
Performances are stellar all around. In supporting roles, Edgar Vivar (known primarily as a comedian in the Spanish-speaking world) and Geraldine Chaplin (Charlie’s daughter, who has an impressive career of her own with wonderful supporting roles in films like Home for the Holidays and Hable Con Ella) are immensely effective as a pair of parapsychologists who are engaged by Laura to explore the mysteries of the house in one of the film‘s most suspenseful sequences. Fernando Cayo provides a great counterpoint as Laura’s husband, the film’s skeptic, who tries to draw Laura away from her grief, to help her get on with her life. Ultimately, it is Belen Rueda who must carry the film on her shoulders, and her performance as Laura is most worthy of praise, never descending into unnecessary histrionics, but always keeping at the forefront Laura’s heartbreak over the loss of her child.
The Orphanage is a film that will stay with you after you watch it. Though it is effective as a horror film, it never forgets the human characters that lie at the center of its story, and their anguish and sadness, their fleshed-out humanity, make us care about them much more than we could ever care about the assembly-line characters of most modern horror films. It is the characters that will haunt us after we watch The Orphanage, and that is great testament to the power of its storytelling, making this film a wonderful addition to the genre.
The Orphanage is available on DVD this week.
-Artemis
Artemis
littlelotte
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