The orphanage
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The orphanage |
| Original title | El orfanato |
| Country of production | Mexico , Spain |
| original language | Spanish |
| Publishing year | 2007 |
| length | 105 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Juan Antonio Bayona |
| script | Sergio G. Sánchez |
| production |
Mar Targarona Guillermo del Toro Álvaro Augustín Joaquín Padro |
| music | Fernando Velázquez |
| camera | Óscar Faura |
| cut | Sergio G. Sánchez |
| occupation | |
| |
The Orphanage (original title: El orfanato ) is a Spanish-Mexican horror film / drama and the successful first-shot director by Juan Antonio Bayona from 2007. The film deals with the supernatural. Belén Rueda plays the leading role .
action
In present-day Spain, 37-year-old Laura and her husband Carlos, a doctor, buy a remote orphanage where Laura lived as a child 30 years ago, and are toying with the idea of putting it back into operation. Her adopted son Simón neither knows of his adoption nor does he realize that he is HIV positive. Not uncommon for his age, Simón, who often sleeps in Laura's bed, has two imaginary friends . In the rustic villa he soon meets six new, much more worrying, imaginary friends. There is a disused lighthouse on the coast. These days Simón is reading the story of Peter Pan , the boy who never grows up, and claims that he himself will never grow up either, just like his new friends.
An elderly social worker named Benigna appears who is intrusive with her file about Simón. Laura expels her from the house. That same evening she hears noises from the garden where the old woman is hiding in the shed. She is found by Laura and flees. When Laura and Carlos want to file a complaint, they discover that there is no social worker named Benigna registered in the village. The police also fail to track down the woman in the following months.
Simón tells Laura that he is going on a scavenger hunt with his fantasy friends . The aim of the game is to find a "treasure" hidden by the others, whereupon you release a wish. Together with his mother, he follows the tracks laid out by his friends, which eventually lead to the drawer in which the documents about Simón are. Simón claims to have found out about the adoption and fatal illness of Tomás, one of his new friends, which his mother does not believe, and calls her a liar.
When the couple celebrated the opening of the orphanage in the garden the next day, Laura wanted to get Simón out of his room to celebrate, but he refused because he wanted to show his mother Tomás' “little house” beforehand. The brief argument ends with a slap in the face for Simón, who then stays in his room. When Laura later tries to find Simón, he cannot be found. A child with a potato sack over his head and a blue smock with Tomás embroidered on it appears in the hallway. Believing it was Simón, Laura tries to pull the sack off his head, but the child locks her in the bathroom and disappears.
Despite a feverish search in the house and at the lighthouse, Simón is still missing. Laura begins to perceive a kind of hauntedness: She hears noises such as knocking and rumbling and is convinced that she can feel the presence of strange beings. In front of a self-help group, she claims that Simón is still alive and has only been kidnapped by his fantasy friends.
In the city - 6 months have passed now - Laura recognizes the mysterious social worker pushing a stroller at a pedestrian crossing and calls her. When she turns around and hesitates, she is run over by an ambulance. Carlos's attempts at resuscitation are futile. Laura finds only one doll in the stroller. When the police searched the dead man's apartment, they found documents that show that Benigna worked in the orphanage many years ago and secretly brought up her deformed son Tomás, who always carried a sack over his face. At the time Laura was leaving the orphanage, the children played a trick on the disfigured Tomás: at low tide they drove him into the cave by the lighthouse and took the sack off his head to see if he would dare to come out. Tomás, who stayed in the cave, drowned with the tide.
Laura is desperate. Nine months after her son's disappearance, she gets in touch with a medium called Aurora and (pseudo) scientists who are holding a séance in her home . The medium fails to track down Simón and the increasingly annoyed Carlos expels her from the house. Aurora advises Laura to listen to her inner voice and tells her that people close to death have the ability to see ghosts.
Laura, increasingly obsessed with finding Simón, discovers the dolls of the five children who lived with her in the orphanage under a window sill and follows in the footsteps of a new scavenger hunt that leads them to an unscrewed doorknob. Looking for the right door, she finds the bones of the five children in a built-in oven in the shed. The police are convinced that Benigna took revenge on her son's playmate. Carlos wants to move out of the house after all these incidents, but Laura, who cannot accept that Simón is dead, feels almost at the end of her search. She persuades him to leave her in the house for two more days.
After Carlos' departure, she begins to set up the orphanage as in earlier times in order to conjure up the former inmates: she assembles the beds in the old dormitory, erects a scarecrow , sets the table, puts on a nanny’s dress and rings the bell, which, however, does not Brings success. Only when she starts to play ox with the ghosts on the mountain do the children appear and lead them into a broom closet, whereupon they disappear again. When Laura sticks the doorknob she found days ago in a hole, a previously unnoticed door can be opened that leads into a cellar. This is where the disfigured Tomás's secret hiding place was, as numerous children's drawings and photos testify to.
She finds her son lying intact and alive in Tomás' former bed and takes him in her arms. When the house starts to boom and children's voices can be heard from the ground floor, she begs Simón not to believe in the ghosts and to stay calm. With this desperate denial, the spook suddenly ends and Laura stands alone in the semi-darkness. The room has now fallen into disrepair, the sheet that Simón was wrapped in before slips out of her hand. When she notices that the banister has broken in one place, she discovers an already mummified child's body on the floor under the stairs, with Tomás' sack on his head. Laura realizes what has happened: The “little house” meant the cellar, Simón was hiding in the cellar. While looking for him she had accidentally wedged the door with pipes from the broom closet. The knocking heard that night was the drumming of her imprisoned son, the loud bang as the railing collapsed beneath him. Your son has been dead for more than nine months.
She carries Simon's body into the dormitory, sits down with him at the window and takes a large dose of tranquilizers. She wishes she had her son back and nods briefly. When she looks up again, all the orphans are sitting in their beds in the room. Tomás is also among them, but without a mask. The lighthouse flares up behind Laura, the orphans and Tomás join her smiling. Simón, alive again, asks if he can wake up. Laura, who has grown up like Wendy Darling , promises to stay with the children.
At the end, Carlos is shown mourning the death of Laura, Simón and the orphans. In the house itself, Carlos finds the amulet that he had lent his wife on the condition that she should return it when Simón reappeared. He finally smiles when the doors open as if by magic after picking up the amulet.
Backgrounds and miscellaneous
The orphanage was filmed in Barcelona and Llanes , Oviedo in Spain.
According to Box Office Mojo , as of March 3, 2009 , the film grossed about $ 79 million worldwide ( Total Lifetime Grosses ), about 91 percent of it outside the United States. Behind Pan's Labyrinth (D: Guillermo del Toro , 2006) this is the second highest-grossing Spanish film of all time.
The film was Spain's official entry to the 80th Academy Awards , but it did not take part in the competition.
Reviews
At Rotten Tomatoes , The Orphanage is listed on March 26, 2009 with 86 percent of 145 evaluated reviews (90 percent of 10 top critics), Metacritic sees the film at 74 percent with 33 evaluated reviews. The film is in the IMDb on December 8, 2013 with the votes of 93,753 viewers with 7.5 out of 10 points.
Almost every film critic remembers The Others (D: Alejandro Amenábar , 2001). Individuals mention The Devil's Backbone (D: Guillermo del Toro , 2001), When the Gondolas Are in Mourning (D: Nicolas Roeg , 1973) or Castle of Secrets (D: Jack Clayton , 1961). Because of the unreliable narrative style, Roger Ebert has doubts as to whether the ghosts exist at all - but that doesn't really matter - and recommends the work to viewers with a developed attention span . David Ansen spoke of a film that " seriously scary" ( " seriously scary") was. The lexicon of international film , on the other hand, states that in the “old-fashioned” production “the spark does not jump”.
“Horror in devilishly economical dosage. [...] A good haunted story understands that the past carries weight [...]. "
“ The orphanage is much more than a horror film [...] With the charm of a beautiful, disturbing setting, a camera that loves doors and stairs, and a score that knows how to appropriately underline the visual language of the film, the orphanage is an unusually mature one Representative of his genre. "
“The basic recipe [...] is not exactly original. [...] But the young Spanish director develops his own style from the set pieces, which impresses with its aesthetic coherence with a reduced color palette, sparingly dosed sound effects and precise cutting surgery . "
“The big theme of the genre : our deep-seated but unacknowledged fear of children [...] Even adoption is a powerful metaphor [...] a disturbing, but intelligent and sensitive dramatization about loss and death: and fantasizes about the wish-fulfillment of following the deceased "
" The orphanage contains exactly one bloody scene [...]"
"The first horror movie in a long time that made me cry."
Awards (selection)
- Goya in the Best Mask category - Lola López and Itziar Arrieta
- Goya in the Best Young Director category - Juan Antonio Bayona
- Goya in the Best Equipment category - Josep Rosell
- Goya in the Best Producer category - Sandra Hermida
- Goya for Best Original Screenplay - Sergio G. Sánchez
- Goya in the Best Sound category - Xavier Mas, Marc Orts and Oriol Tarragó
- Goya in the Best Special Effects category - David Martí, Montse Ribé, Pau Costa, Enric Masip, Lluís Castells and Jordi San Agustín
- Nominated in the Best Costumes Category - Maria Reyes
- Nominated in the Best Editing category - Elena Ruiz
- Nominated in the Best Film category
- Nominated in the category Best Actress - Belén Rueda
- Nominated in the Best Young Actor category - Roger Príncep
- Nominated in the category Best Film Music - Fernando Velázquez
- Nominated for Best Supporting Actress - Geraldine Chaplin
- Nominated in the category Best European Film
- Nominated in the Best Actress category - Belén Rueda
- Nominated in the Best Camera category
- Nominated in the Best Film Music category
- Fantasy postage 2008
- International Fantasy Film Award in the Best Actress category - Belén Rueda
- International Fantasy Film Award for Best Director - Juan Antonio Bayona
- São Paulo International Film Festival 2007
- Nominated for the International Jury Award - Juan Antonio Bayona
- Sant Jordi Awards 2008
- Audience Award in the Best Film category - Juan Antonio Bayona
- Barcelona Film Awards 2007
- Barcelona Film Award in the Best Actress category - Belén Rueda
- Barcelona Film Award in the Best Production Design category - Josep Rosell
- Barcelona Film Award in the Best Cinematography category - Óscar Faura
- Barcelona Film Award in the Best Film category
- Barcelona Film Award in the Best Editing category - Elena Ruiz
- Barcelona Film Award in the Best Young Director category - Juan Antonio Bayona
- Barcelona Film Award in the Best Sound category - Xavier Mas, Marc Orts and Oriol Tarragó
- Cinema Writers Circle Awards, Spain 2008
- CEC Award in the Best Editing category - Elena Ruiz
- CEC Award in the Young Talent category - Juan Antonio Bayona
- CEC Award in the Best Film Music category - Fernando Velázquez
- Gérardmer Film Festival 2008
- Grand Prize - Juan Antonio Bayona
- SCI FI Jury Award - Juan Antonio Bayona
- Spanish Actors Union 2008
- Award of the Spanish Actors Union for Best Supporting Actress in a Film - Geraldine Chaplin
- Nomination for Best Actress in a Film - Belén Rueda
- Spanish Music Awards 2008
- Music Award in the Best Film Music category - Fernando Velázquez
Web links
- The orphanage in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The orphanage at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Anthony Lane : Gone Missing in The New Yorker (English)
- Mick LaSalle: Abandoned orphanage available for remodeling - ghosts included in the San Francisco Chronicle (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for the orphanage . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2007 (PDF; test number: 112 560 K).
- ↑ a b IMDb , see web links.
- ^ The Orphanage. In: Box Office Mojo. Box Office Mojo, LLC, accessed March 3, 2009 .
- ↑ Juan Antonio Bayona. (No longer available online.) In: Arte Tracks. ARTE GEIE, May 3, 2008, formerly in the original ; accessed on August 31, 2008 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b See web links.
- ↑ http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/orphanage?q=orphanage
- ↑ a b c Ty Burr: In 'Orphanage,' a masterful mix of dread and suspense. In: The Boston Globe . January 11, 2008, accessed on August 31, 2008 (English): “dread in fiendishly measured doses. [...] A good spook story understands this - that the past has weight [...] "
- ↑ a b c Eva Tüttelmann: They're heeeere. In: cut # 49. Retrieved August 31, 2008 .
- ↑ a b Jim Emerson: TIFF 2007: Casa of Horrors. (No longer available online.) In: http://blogs.suntimes.com . Archived from the original on July 6, 2008 ; accessed on August 31, 2008 (English): "the only horror film in recent memory that brought me to tears" Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Roger Ebert : The Orphanage (R). December 28, 2007, accessed on August 31, 2008 (English): “if indeed there are ghosts in it. I am not sure [...] It matters not for us, because we are inside Laura's mind, no matter what "
- ↑ David Ansen: A Visit to 'The Orphanage'. In: Newsweek . December 15, 2007, accessed August 31, 2008 .
- ^ The Orphanage in the Lexicon of International Film
- ↑ Martin Schwickert: Labyrinth of the spirits. In: Der Tagesspiegel . February 19, 2008, accessed August 31, 2008 .
- ^ Peter Bradshaw: The Orphanage. In: The Guardian . March 21, 2008, accessed on August 31, 2008 : “the genre's great theme: our profound yet unacknowledged fear of children. […] Adoption itself is a powerful metaphor […] The orphanage is a disturbing, and yet intelligent and compassionate dramatisation of loss and bereavement: in some ways, it is a wish-fulfillment fantasy, a way of following the departed into the void "
- ↑ Carina Chocano: 'The Orphanage'. (No longer available online.) In: Los Angeles Times . December 28, 2007, archived from the original on October 5, 2008 ; accessed on August 31, 2008 (English): “There's a single gory scene in“ The Orphanage ”“ Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
