The Others (2001) Poster



Jump to: Cameo (1) | Director Cameo (1)
In a pivotal scene, Grace finds a photograph album containing pictures of people she believed to be sleeping. Mrs. Mills informs her they're all deceased, and that people photographed the deceased in the previous (19th) century. In reality, people did photograph their deceased loved ones during the late 19th century. Most were photographed lying down, as if in a deep sleep; others would be propped up in chairs, posed with favorite objects (children with favorite playthings; adults with books or newspapers), or standing up, with the help of special frames or supports.
The movie opens with Nicole Kidman, in voiceover, reading a story. She begins with the words, "Now children, are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin." The BBC radio programme "Listen With Mother", broadcast in the UK between 1950 and 1982, always began, "Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin."
The basis for this movie is an episode of the British series 'Armchair Theatre' called 'The Others' made in 1970 and remade as a movie called 'Voices' in 1972. This version is more elaborate but the story is the same.
The house - supposedly on the island of Jersey - is actually located in the north of Spain (Santander).
The Others (2001) was released a few months prior to Vanilla Sky (2001), the American remake of 'Alejandro Amenabár''s Open Your Eyes (1997). Ironically, it starred Nicole Kidman's then estranged husband Tom Cruise.
The ghostly image appearing over Grace's shoulder resolves itself into a somber face in a painting on the wall. This image is actually a detail (specifically, a close-up of the Puritan man's face) of the 1855 Pre-Raphaelite painting "The Wounded Cavalier" by William Shakespeare Burton. The face of the painting is that of Eduardo Noriega.
The Others (2001) comes from a peculiar cross-section of production cultures. It stars an Australian woman playing an Englishwoman. It was written and directed by a Spaniard, backed by Americans, set in Jersey but filmed in Spain.
Nicole Kidman pressed for the hiring of Eric Sykes as Edmund Tuttle as she and her then-husband Tom Cruise had twice been hugely impressed by his theatre work (in "School for Wives" and "Kafka's Dick"). Sykes was equally fulsome in his appreciation of Kidman and her work.
Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise's high profile divorce was finalized the same week that The Others (2001) was released.
This was the first film ever to receive the Best Film Award at the Goyas (Spain's national film awards) with not a single word of Spanish spoken in it.
Being a Spanish co-production, this film went on after its release on September 7, 2001, to become Spain's biggest grossing domestic film of all time after less than two months of release.
Alejandro Amenábar's first English language film.


Mateo Gil:  screenwriter of Alejandro Amenábar's previous film Open Your Eyes (1997), as a dead man's photograph in the album.

Director Cameo 

Alejandro Amenábar:  Appears in one of the photographs of dead people - he's the one on the right with a moustache, of the group of three men.

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