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The Orphanage
Reviewed By Rich Drees
While the Japanese have certainly overworked the spooky-ghost child
meme for all it is worth over the last several years, there is still
power in the tragic notion of a life full of potential being cut so
short.
Laura (Belen Rueda) has decided to return to the closed
orphanage where she was raised, hoping to turn it into a home for
disabled children with the help of her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo)
and young son Simon (Roger Princep). All seems well until Simon
tells his mother that he has new imaginary friends, whose
descriptions seem to match Laura’s memories of other children she
knew at the orphanage before she was adopted. In the aftermath of a
visit from a rather sinister social worker (Montserrat Carulla),
Simon learns that he is adopted and is HIV positive. Upset, he runs
away. While her husband concentrates on a nationwide search for
their missing son, Laura becomes more convinced that Simon was taken
by the ghosts she is now sure haunt the old home.
The
Orphanage comes off as a more psychological take on Tobe
Hopper’s Poltergeist, an examination of a mother’s despair
and its effects on her sanity in the wake of her child’s
disappearance. Relying on subtle camera tricks rather than splashy
visual effects, Orphanage’s storytelling power really lies in
the strength of Rueda’s performance and director Juan Antonio
Bayona’s ability to drag out the growing feelings of dread and
madness that her character experiences. Keeping things on a slow
boil for an extended amount of the film, Bayona balances Laura’s
search for Simon with the mystery regarding what happened to the
children she knew during her time at the orphanage, expertly weaving
the two around each other right up to the film’s darkly sweet and
poetic ending.
It’s easy to
see why director Guillermo del Toro is involved with this film, even
if only in an executive producer capacity. Both Orphanage and
del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth pose the same question to their
respective audiences- Are their heroines entering into a
magical/spiritual world that co-exists with our own mundane reality,
or are they escaping their harsh and unbearable circumstances into a
fantasy world that only exists in their minds? The two directors
present their stories differently- del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth
is a much richer imagined fantasy world while The Orphanage
is more in the vein of a more traditional ghost story, relying on
mood and visual slight-of-hand rather than makeup and visual
effects. But each tells their respective stories so powerfully, that
they leave much material for audiences to discuss after the end
credits have rolled. |
