The tale of two mothers

“Mommy, mommy, can I wake up?” asks little Simon. “You are already awake.  You can get up now darling,” replies Laura. An overjoyed Simon jumps out of bed, to step out and play with Tomas and his other imaginary friends. Laura, with her eyes open, is still not awake. She fails to see the dangers that lurk in her age-old house and in her little child’s imaginary playmates. She wakes up only when her son is taken away from her. By then, it is too late.

The haunted orphanage is a beautiful mansion set by the sea. Six children play on its grounds as flower petals float gently in the afternoon breeze. A scarecrow stands a mute witness to their frolics. These are Laura’s memories from her childhood. One day, her memories bring her back to the same old place, as she and her husband intend to set up a home for special children at the orphanage. Her adopted son, Simon, is suffering from AIDS and spends his days playing with imaginary friends. Laura is worried about them – a worry that soon turns to terror as one fine day, Simon is taken away by Tomas and his imaginary companions. Laura’s quest for her child would open the gates of her memories, as the gruesome tale of the orphanage and its inhabitants unfold.

‘El Orfanato’ (The Orphanage) comes from Guillermo del Toro, the acclaimed director of ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, which undoubtedly is a classic of modern times. It is cruel to compare the two, but ‘The Orphanage’ pales in comparison, with the gentle human treatment that made a classic out of ‘Labyrinth’, missing in this film. But to do a follow-up job to ‘Labyrinth’ can be a Herculean task, and director Juan Antonio Bayona nearly manages to pull it off. Individual performances in ‘The Orphanage’ are just adequate. Belen Rueda gives a poignant performance as the anguished mother in search of her son, but the rest of the cast is just ordinary. ‘The Orphanage’, however, is not about individual performances. The real star of the film is the brilliant and powerful screenplay.

The story is simple and clichéd, but its nuances are driven into the heart of the viewer through the subconscious images presented through the camera. The subtleties in the story are too many for the casual viewer to comprehend, but for a connoisseur of cinema, they are too hard to ignore. Laura uses a table clock to reflect the moonlight onto the lighthouse to amuse Simon. This action perhaps acts as her trigger into the past, when the lighthouse used to protect the children in the orphanage. The movements of the carousel in the wind, and the usage of weather to depict events that are about to happen in the house are masterstrokes of genius. The inevitable fates of the characters are alluded to early into the film through the reference to Peter Pan’s Neverland and the children who never grew up. And what of the mysterious old lady, Benigna, who wreaked her deadly revenge on the children of the orphanage for the prank that led to the death of her deformed child? Her love for her dead child is mutely displayed through the little doll in the likeness of her son, which she carries unto her death. This is the story of two mothers and the extent to which they go in the love for their child.

Was it just a twist of fate that attracted Laura and her family back to the home of her childhood? Or does the orphanage have a sinister power that draws her back to be its helpless victim? As the story unfolds before our eyes, we sense that for Laura, there is no way back. However, rather than the inevitable sad ending, there is a deep sense of contentment as Laura sits around Simon and her childhood friends, relating the bed-time story of the lost children. A gentle smile adorns her lips as behind her, the lighthouse once again comes to life. All she wanted was to be with Simon, and unlike Wendy in the story of Peter Pan, she is in Neverland with the children who could never grow up.

‘El Orfanato’ is, without doubt, a masterpiece. To call it a horror flick would not do justice to the film. In spite of the fact that the haunted-house formula has been milked dry by storytellers throughout the years, Bayona and del Toro prove that a heart-wrenching tale can be spun around a tried and tested theme. The film has neither skeletons hidden in cupboards, nor the split-second scares that send shrieks echoing across movie halls in America. As the story unfolds there is only a deep sense of dread that permeates through the heart of the viewer – a feeling that arises out of the anticipation of the unknown in our minds, a belief that things are going from bad to worse. As the medium Aurora tells Laura in the film, “Seeing is not believing. It is the other way around.”