那不仅仅是一部高分烧脑悬疑惊悚片，更是一曲苍凉哀痛无人送行的挽歌

那不仅仅是一部高分烧脑悬疑惊悚片，更是一曲苍凉哀痛无人送行的挽歌

——《小岛惊魂》观后感

作于2019年8月28日

周志芳

The movie is not only an excellent thriller suspense movie but also a somber elegy for all people and for all time.

——for The Other

Zhou Zhifang

Yesterday evening, after watching the movie The Other，I couldn’t help weeping in the privacy of my own room for the miserable fortune of the protagonists. At the beginning of the movie, I only regard it as an ordinary thriller suspense film with general horrible fogs, ghastly darkness, terrible dialogue, action, frightened facial expression, the stoniest look of the servants and so on. However, after watching the movie The Other，I understand it is an excellent anti-war film. In my opinion, the major theme of the film is anti-war and the irreparable damage of the war which is filled with abundance of compassion and splendid technical achievement.

It is one of the best films which I have seen. The author and the director of the movie, Alejandro Amenábar，is a real pioneer of thriller suspense movie. I admire him very much for his great talent and breathtaking genius which is recognized by the wise and kind people in the world many years ago. It is too late to know him.

The translation of the title of the film is 小岛惊魂and I think it is not suitable for the director and the writer’s original idea which perhaps it should be translated into 他者according to the primitive meaning. I guess the topic is related to the Jean-Paul Sartre‘s famous sentences that others are hell（L'enfer, c'est les autres.）. Some of them are shared illusions, and others are part of your personal hell.

The story of the film tells the strange and terrible meeting and coexist among the persons who are still alive, the dead who don’t know or confirm she or he is dead, and the dead who take care of their masters, who have been killed by their mother and herself because of great spiritual pressure, and they already have been dead fifties years ago because of tuberculosis.

The movie constitutes all sorts of contrast and comparisons. The mood is dark and heavy, the tone is gloomy, it is real a social criticism which includes politics, war, crime, religion, marriage and family, psychology and supernatural and so on. in my opinion, the movie The Other，just like the Waste Land, written by T.S.Eliot, is regarded as a representation of the disillusionment of the post-war generation, which is filled with satire, hint, prophecy and metaphor so that is difficult to understand the real meaning at the first but grasp the theme at the end of the film. There are so many abrupt changes of speakers, locations, affairs and time. At the same time, there are also so many gaps, absence of connective tissures and discordant juxtapositions in the film so that what the author intends the audiences to see and feel the fragmentary nature of life. The major feature of the film is the spiritual debilitation because of war. The tone is somber and the war is anti-human, destroy the happiness of the life, separate people from their relatives and lovers, even after they were dead, they could not gain the peace because of great gloomy and cold mood.

Under the great spiritual pressure, the heroine took care of two children by herself because her husband must take part in the battle. In order to wait for her lover, she insisted on staying the old big house which is similar to the hell where her children could not bear the sunlight. When Nazi invaded into the island, she was dead after killing her children by the pillow. Their servants came back to indicate her that they were dead but they didn’t confirm, on the country, they thought others alive in the house were ghosts. At the end of the film, their servants told the truth to them.

The real terrible feeling for the movie comes from not the ghosts of the houses but the hurt of war, psychological fear, and the miserable fortune of the hero and heroine. The children were afraid of sunlight because of a strange disease according to their mother and doctor. In fact, it means that the house where they were living just like a hell without hope and sunlight. One of the servants said that his aunt‘s rheumatism was cured by herself, in fact it means that his aunt was dead. The death could cure his aunt‘s rheumatism so that could cure the children’s disease for the sunlight only when they were dead one day. However, the death could cure the harm and hurt of the war? Ernest Miller Hemingway ever said, don't ask who the death knell is ringing for. The death knell rings for you.

The husband perhaps has been dead for a long time but his wife and children still believed that one day he would come back with them so that I think of another similar dram in Peking Opera The Spring Boudoir Dream(春闺梦) which originated from a poem created by Chen Tao (陈陶) in Tang Dynasty “the poor dead’s identity are indeterminate along the riverside and their bones are lying all over the place，however, they are still the sweet lovers in their wives’ spring boudoir dream” (可怜无定河边骨，犹是春闺梦里人). Millions of men died young in disappointment, despair, fear and hopelessness because of cruel war. They are looking forward the meaning of life but couldn’t find out the way of going home. These sorrows are more than flesh and blood can bear. The bodies buried in the fine ash of the war slowly decayed but their soul would having been wandering in the fields where they ever battled with enemies. The war killed millions of innocent people in the name of justice of the people but for the selfish desires of the rulers. Perhaps the author and the director of the movie, Alejandro Amenábar，deems mourning is necessary. The cause for mourning is the insignificant loss of their precious life and the continuous losing of other people’s lives in the war as they still don’t know the pity of war which is senseless and causes senseless deaths. The movie The Otheris not only an excellent thriller suspense movie but also a somber elegy for all people and for all time.