The
Orphanage (El Orfanato)
This is a Spanish film with a supernatural subject. As with many films of this type, we are initially presented with an accumulation of mysterious events that eventually forces the characters to contemplate the possibility that they are being contacted by supernatural forces. Films about the supernatural typically contain many “shocks” in their development that are aimed at eliciting a visceral response from the audience. Also, such films tend to have several peaks and troughs in the tempo of plot development as well as instances of audience misdirection to maintain suspense levels, and this film achieves all these points well.
There is more to this film than its capacity to elicit surprise from the audience. This is a cohesive piece beginning with the opening credits - whose artwork prefigure a key plot development - and continuing throughout with the recurrent themes of darkness and light, remembrance, and linkages between disparate worlds.
The director successfully communicates a theme of darkness and light by, among other things, using a symbolic abandoned lighthouse as a plot feature. In broad terms, the director seems to associate darkness with the supernatural realm and with the confusion one experiences when one feels a connection to supernatural beings, and with feelings of confusion in general. One particularly memorable scene - which takes place on the day when the main character first contemplates seriously the reality of the supernatural beings that have heretofore interfered with her life and resolves to try to parley with them - is introduced with a shot of a clear bright morning sky. At the end, perhaps an attempt to reflect the established mingling of the two realms, and to underline the finale, we are presented with an image of a setting sun in a twilight sky.
The theme of remembrance is also explored. In alliance with this, the director signals the notion of establishing connections between the past, present and, as suggested in the film by a medium’s assistant, the future. These themes and concepts are primarily suggested by the importance to the plot of various objects that belong to the orphanage that are antique in nature and thus belong to another, older, time. These include an intricately fashioned key for a kitchen drawer, and a brass scalloped door-handle. As the film reaches its climax, the power of objects to link the mundane and supernatural realms, and to link the past and present, is illustrated clearly. The theme of connections between disparate domains is suggested partly through a recurrent image of sea-shells (which have such connotations because they are objects that are known to survive when either submerged or stranded by the fluctuating tide) and also by the protracted séance scene where the mediums attempt to gain access to the spirit world.
The actual building where most of the film’s action takes place has an important role in the film and as such is more than a mute backdrop upon which the film’s events are hung. Overall, artistic effects are well achieved, and there is excellent use of costume makeup, for example in depicting the disfigured face of Tomas and the disfigured face of his mother, Benigna, after her car accident. However, as far as the storytelling aspect goes, the plot threatens to spiral out of control, and eventually the complex melange of the plots and sub-plots involving the quick and the dead leaves one feeling overwhelmed.