Comments on: Comparing Endings: “El Orfanato” (“The Orphanage”) and “Rule of Rose” (warning, movie spoilers!)

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[...]Rule of Rose Mysteries » Comparing Endings: “El Orfanato” (“The Orphanage”) and “Rule of Rose” (warning, movie spoilers!)[...]…

By: kgordon

kgordon — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 10:15:06 +0000

I went to the cinema to watch El Orfanato when it first came out and really enjoyed it. del Toro is a fantastic storyteller. I rewatched it for the first time this morning after being reminded of it by reading your site, and a have been considering a couple of points I think are important in interpreting the ending.

First up is the the final thing the medium says to Laura as she leaves, that seeing isn’t believing, but believing is seeing (or words to that effect). This is what thematically drives Laura’s ‘treasure hunt’ and I feel it also signifies to us as viewers how we should approach the end: either seeing is believing, i.e. the psychological approach, that Laura is demented and the ghosts are all in her head, and her dying thoughts are a fever dream; or, that believing is seeing, i.e. the ghost are there and Laura is actively helping them by joining them. Without going into amateur film interpretation mode too much, I think the main thrust of the ending isn’t for us to decide for ourselves which of these is right, but rather both are equally coherent, in terms of the story, and that both interpretations contrast satisfyingly in terms of their emotional impact. Like the final scene to Pan’s Labyrinth, if we choose to believe in magic
we can have a happy ending.

The second thing I think is significant are the Peter Pan references.

The ending of El Orfanato puts it in quite a different place from RoR, in my head, although they have very similar themes, characters and references throughout. Here’s why: El Orfanato was a very chilling horror story all the way up until the climax with the ghost child tapping Laura on the shoulder during the ‘treasure hunt’… at this point part of my brain is insisting that this should be terrifying, but in reality what I feel is overwhelming sadness and sentimentality. The children just want to play, and this scene is foreshadowed by the opening of the movie. In RoR, on the other hand, I think the horror aspects are kept up right till the end, and beyond. It is still satisfying in its own way, to me, because there is a sense of closure though it is much more unsettling and ambiguous. Maybe it’s the difference in mediums (media?) that encourage such different endings: cinema goers might well have been angry with such a wtf ending as RoR gives us, whilst in the game the ‘inconclusiveness’ supports the dreamlike – or nightmare-like – quality of the game as a whole, especially since we can restart and it is almost like a recurring nightmare. But then you can watch a movie again too, so maybe I’m taking it too far ha ha.

Sorry for the long and rambling post but hopefully there are a couple of interesting things to think about in there

By: PokerNemesis

PokerNemesis — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 02:19:32 +0000

Welcome, Ricardo Oviedo!

By: Ricardo Oviedo

Ricardo Oviedo — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 23:36:38 +0000

Hi, I just remember what wounderful game was (one of the better stories i read/see) i searched in google (while working) things about RoR and i found this great site (i surprise how long is in the web).
I finished the game many years ago and i forget many things but always believed that jennifer die after the events that we see in the game, kind of other world. Is like she find a way to comunicate with herself in the past so she can protect brown. Without the key, brown would be found by the other kids and he will killed by them (thanks to wendy). Jennifer tie brown (after recieving the clue that “herself of the other side” put in the “guardian”) and continue with her life (knowing that she gonna die somehow) without her love but saving him from death. The story in the surrealistic world is many years after the orphanate´s massacre, so maybe brown soul join jennifer soul in her (before his appearance) interminable quest.
I forget many littles (and huge also) clues so i not complete assure of this.
Great site, hope listen many news about this and the RoR world.

good luck (sorry, my english is very poor)

By: Maron

Maron — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 17:43:33 +0000

Hi!
I just finished the game and I was wondering…¿has anyone ever considered that Jennifer killed the other childrens and even the adults and she did make it appear like it was Gregory? Because….
-The Teacher hated her(He changed after she arrived)
-Martha hated her(She called her Filthy)
-Clara don’t talked to her(maybe shame?)
-The children hated her(in Once Upon a Time they are even teasing her…..Jeeeeenifeeeeeer)

I believe that because we are seeing her memories of her childhood (what she remembers and how she perceived it) and I never see her actually fond of someone, she just loved Brown and Wendy(before she killed Brown).
LITTLE KID, MAD WITH ALL THE CHILDRENS…..AND SHE HAS A GUN >=)

¿How can the children survive without adults???¿Food?¿supplies?…It don’t make sense at all….

(Sorry for my english, It’s not my mother tongue)

By: PokerNemesis

PokerNemesis — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 05:08:00 +0000

@Ylicec,
Jennifer lost her real family, and had been very isolated for months afterward. This, I imagine, left her very needy with respect to relationships. I would expect that she might well have thought of everyone at the orphanage as being like a family for her. And people can be treated very badly by family members and yet still feel strong attachments to them.

By: Ylicec

Ylicec — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 01:26:06 +0000

It’s fine for her to remember the good times with Wendy and Brown, but I don’t ever remember her with other friends like Diana or Meg. They treated her horribly, but did she still think they were friends?

By: Ana

Ana — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 04:34:23 +0000

She leaves Brown in the shed to hide him from the other children. She leaves him to protect him.

By: PokerNemesis

PokerNemesis — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:17:26 +0000

By: PokerNemesis

PokerNemesis — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:12:19 +0000

@Zukichalice
I would say that we never see anything that is not inside of a dream.