Review: The Orphanage
Warning! The following may contain spoilers…
“The Orphanage” is very much a traditional ghost story with traditional elements of the genre: A large, gloomy house with plenty of nooks, crannies, creaks and groans; a narrative structure founded on a mystery to be solved, namely, discovering the violent, traumatic event underlying the ghostly activity; a child sensitive to the presence of ghosts; and others. It is actually in some of these other elements that the film’s function as a ghost story critically compromises itself. Starting with a protagonist obsessed with figuring out what’s going on, we get the hysterical woman (of course) contrasted by the calm, rather useless lump of a husband (also of course). Read: The true believer and the skeptic. To this we can add the inevitable medium and séance scoffed at by the scientific psychologist. In the bigger picture, we see in “The Orphanage” the commonplace metaphysics of paranormal stories, the kind that (to put it grossly) emphasizes religious epistemology, where believing precedes seeing, and rejects scientific epistemology, in which belief stems from seeing. In other words, “The Orphanage” is quite happy to relegate to science the role of gloomy gus, the pooper whose sole purpose is to accuse (true) believers in the paranormal of fraud. The scientific method is the victim here, as no one seems to use it to determine whether or not the haunting is real or exists merely in the woman’s mind – another staple theme of the genre.
The Storyline May Illuminate
Before going on to the implications of this metaphysics, a little background is in order. “The Orphanage” concerns a woman named Laura who, along with her doctor husband, buys the orphanage in which she was raised in the hopes of turning it into a home for children with special needs – children like her adopted son Simon, who is ill but doesn’t know it. Filled at first with the joy of a worthy cause and the happy memories of her time at the orphanage, Laura becomes increasingly filled with dread as Simon talks to invisible friends and becomes the center of strange occurrences, including a disappearance that leads Laura down the dark path of the orphanage’s history.
The Rhythm Is Unassailable
No doubt, this is a very well crafted film, wisely favouring psychology over CGI-manufactured scares a la “The Messengers.” The pace is perfect, the tone is deliciously tense and ominous, and as part of a sturdy cast, Belen Rueda embodies the obsessed, heart-broken mother with aching sympathy. But the film’s resolution adds more than simply an anti-science spin to the metaphysical assumptions that give the story its foundations. “The Orphanage” has drawn comparisons to “Pan’s Labyrinth” by critics like IGN’s Joe Utichi – comparisons propelled, no doubt, by Guillermo Del Toro’s involvement as producer. As it turns out, the comparison is apt. Both films espouse a metaphysical attitude Nietzsche would decry as nihilistic, namely, favouring the fantastical at the expense of life, of reality. Just as Ofelia in “Pan’s Labyrinth” either uses fantasy as a psychological coping tactic or actually does find her reward in a fantasy world after failing to survive reality, depending on one’s interpretation, the ending to “The Orphanage” has a similar implication: Anything is better than being alive in our reality. It might be tempting to think that the implication, in this case, is intended to disturb or, at least, foster ambiguity, but the film’s final shots don’t really support that.
So I’m left in the same position I found myself after watching “Pan’s Labyrinth;” captivated by “The Orphanage” as a film while rejecting it on the basis of its odious metaphysical stance. With several other ghost films, like “The Others” or “The Sixth Sense,” playing successfully with similar concepts – albeit with a greater attention to character drama and with greater metaphysical honesty – “The Orphanage” is at risk of being overpraised for being more than it actually is: An expertly made but hardly revolutionary psychological ghost story.
Entertainment Quality: * (out of two)
Technical Quality: ** (out of two)
The Orphanage. Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona. Written by Sergio G. Sanchez. In Spanish with English subtitles. Starring Belen Rueda, Fernando Cayo and Roger Princep. 106 minutes. Rated R (for some disturbing content).