Father Geek here... Alejandro Amenabar was in Paris this Tuesday to talk about the French release of his brillant film THE OTHERS, and other things. And our man Grozilla was there just for you...

If you haven't seen this great director's brillant masterwork yet, then I (Father Geek) strongly reccommend that you DO NOT read this interview! Bookmark it and come back to it after seeing this wonderfully moody motion picture. If you choose to ignore this warning you WILL BE SORRY, that I can promise you...

GROZILLA: "The Others" is being sold as your first American film. But we can see by the credits, that except for the cast and part of the money, all has been made in Spain...

AMENABAR: All that came from the fact that Laura Wagner and Tom Cruise bought the rights of remaking ABRE LOS OJOS. Then I met them to talk about that. But at the time I was already workin' on the script of The Others. My Spanish producers thought, this film has to be done in English language. So it was made that way. But I first thought it through in Spanish. I even set the story in South America... Before Tom was involved in the production, we were looking for all the money in Spain and France.

(Then there was a sudden intervention of his French PR agent, spoken with light anger and a touch of irony)

Something has to be certain for everyone out there. This film is absolutely not an Hollywood studio movie. The main producer is Spanish, the main money is Spanish, the director/writer is Spanish. Wagner/Cruise are just executive producers. The Weinstein bros. have just bought the "exploitation" rights for the USA only, and that's all. But you know the Weinsteins, they'll always tend to appropriate stuff as their own...

WARNING! There are major SPOILERS just mere seconds away...

Stop now, or the flick could very easily be ruined for you...

What interested you in a ghost story ?

Deaths have completely changed the relationships in this family. That's what really interested me. About the concept of death, how it affects, changes the perspective of the characters. How this mother will completely treat the education of her children in another way after discovering they're dead.

How did you confront the gothic style, and the English traditions vs. the Catholic backgrounds so very strong in Spain ?

Once I start writing, I do need to know what the story is about and what I want to tell. I wouldn't say it was difficult, I actually wrote this story very very fast and found a way to play with metaphors around all the gothic elements used as darkness and light. All that meant something. The film refers to religion where darkness is associated to very strong beliefs, the kind of phantasisms that blinded this woman and this whole family, It doesn't let them realize their own condition. Light is supposed to be a new kind of knowledge for all these people. When it surrounds the house, there's no explanation for it. For me its a limbo situation meaning they don't know who or where they are. That's what she learns at the end of the film. What I found interesting about an optimistic position is that it refered to the classic gothic tales in that at the end we got that eternal confrontation between good and evil, and then answers for everything, the film is using all those stereotypes and cliches to say something about the questions. I wanted to close the film by asking more questions.

But at the end, you literally open the curtain up and give the people some explanations. That doesn't happened that often in the gothic way à la Henry James. Does that mean that European, or Latin feelings need explanations...

The Anglo-Saxon way of life has the need to justify all acts. The whole concept of good and evil and souls going to heaven and hell, is in both cultures. I wanted at least to have answers for the physical aspects, the surface plot of the film. But I wanted to leave absolutely opened the theological or philosphical aspects. At the end of the movie there's no logical explanations for the whole situation they're living, make that placed in : they're existing nowhere, and they don't know why.... So it's still completely open.

In the end, the bible doesn't give the answers and if revelation comes, it's through differents means. In a way, can we say that this film is a tribute to irrationality, and to the acceptance of mystical, or magical powers and behaviours ?

I insisted on my agnostical vision of this story. The ghost stuff is what Hitchcock called a McGuffin, an excuse to use what interested me only in the way it affects my characters.

The film has a dark side. In the visual style as well as in its content. How did you approach this in the writing and in the shooting ?

If you're talking in the psychological way, I don't believe in white or black sides, but in greyishness. I'd say this film is all about grey colour. That was intentional. It was supposed to be in the script. Once Nicole started to rehearse, we insisted on that, having this up and down character built on fragility. She could call forth many differents states of mind and behaviours. Her character is quite complex. This is the whole film to me: an exploration of this grey side. On the other hand, we mustn't forget that she's playing someone who's gone mad. At the end of the movie, the audience should at least, maybe not feel justification, but at least understand why she's done what she's done.

There used to be in the 70's in Spain a strong tradition of horror movies. They all tried to talk about sex thru detoured ways. And they succeeded when the Franco's censorship let it pass. The Others also got a strong content of sexuality. On this side do you feel its an heir to that tradition ?

When I think back about my main influences, I don't find the Spanish horror films of those years there. As for the sexual content : I shot a couple of quite explicit sex scenes that I cut out because I realized this was the kind of movie that doesn't need that kind of explanation. It was more interesting to me to show how this woman was in need of sex. We tested the film with those harder scenes, they just seemed to go against what we had built up.

The Others is made in a very classic way, following the rules of the Genre. Did you consciously make it that way, as opposed to all the post-modern horror films, like Scream, we've seen these last several years ?

I'm a huge fan of horror. I've always found it as the perfect genre in cinema. Because it's so intense, so radical. But on the other hand I also always found it was the perfect genre to express any kind of human concern, to talk about important and serious things. However, many times I have found horror films were only used for entertainment. When I started to write this story, I did not want to miss this point of view. I wanted to make a scary movie based on a continuous sense of tension and suspense. It was, in a way like stepping back to the genre of old. Anyway I think there's some very good horror films made these days. I think Scream, at least the first one, was pretty clever. I just wanted to make a film that would take the genre seriously, not just for laughs, or simple jump scares.

A lot of the fear that the film gives comes from the framing and the sound...

For me perspective is vital. I always think a story through from a psychological and a physical point of view. Always try to tell the story from its characters point of view. It really helps to have the audience almost being inside the character to let'em discover at the same time what's going on. All this has to do with of the concept of not being explicit, not using special effects, but by hiding things we can hardly see. As for the sound, the film was mixed in the complete opposite way that horror films are mixed nowadays. I didn't want sounds surrounding the audience, I wanted quite a monaural sound which could seem to open when we got on the other side. Then the audience can be impressed. For this release I went to theaters just to check how it could compete volume wise with Jurassic Park III. I was quite afraid that the audience could just hear the film playing in the room to the side.

Did the choice of Kidman have anything to do with the fact you were involved with Cruise/ Wagner or was it totally an independant casting choice?

Actually I don't know... She was in a list of choices of actresses for the part. But never in my mind when I wrote the script. When the script arrived in the hands of Tom, I suppose he thought she could be great in this part and passed it on to her...

How was it to work with her ?

With her I have had the most intense and satisfying experience I had with an actor or actress. Just in terms of quality and quantity, it was such a demanding role that obviously we had to be very close from the very beginning for understanding the character we wanted to build up. She doesn't behave like a star, at least not on the set in which she was completly disciplined and very commited to the film. She's a star, that's undeniable but she wants to be treated as an actress when she's working and she's very hard working. We discussed about what kind of hair she should wear. We thought blond hair will make her look more english, then we cut some wigs and realized that with it she ressembled Grace Kelly, that was a good point for the movie. Nicole was very involved in every decision, she actually wanted to have this collaboration, this relationship with all the directors she works with. I tried to give her as much freedom as possible but I have a vision when I film a story, and I need to be close that vision. She understood that. The good thing about Nicole is that she's very intuitive but at the same time she can be very very technical. We could talk in terms of a little bit more or little bit less. Sometimes it was kind of mathematical. When we shot the scene where she talks with the husband, SHE came up with the idea of being naked - which I thought was a very good idea- but when we needed to shoot scenes based on suspense, she just followed the storyboards exactly. She's a very impressive actress.

Well that was all the time I had. I would have liked, like you I'm sure, to have discussed ABRE LOS OJOS and Cameron Crowe's take on it in his new VANILLA SKY, but time (and the PR watchdog) just did not allow it. Maybe next time...

Grozilla