Nicole Kidman, right, in ‘The Others’ Credit: Dimension Films

God gave us our minds for a reason. Over the centuries, many brilliant Catholic thinkers have put them to good use, puzzling through the mysteries of our faith and offering a deeper understanding of the things of God. But with a powerful intellect comes a great temptation: We may start to believe that, like God, we have all the answers. Jesus criticized the religious scholars of his time for thinking they understood God better than anyone, when, in fact, they shrunk God down to fit their understanding. God is always bigger than we can comprehend, and some divine truths can only be seen with the eyes of the heart. When we forget that, we risk a faith that knows everything and understands nothing.

The tension between what we can and can’t know, between dogmatism and mercy, plays out in “The Others” (2001), an atmospheric ghost story from Spanish writer-director Alejandro Amenábar. Nicole Kidman plays Grace, a devout Catholic woman living on one of England’s Channel Islands in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Grace runs her house, a rambling old mansion, with rigid precision. She gives her children a strict and rigorous religious education, drilling them on their prayers and the precepts of the faith, especially those concerning sin and damnation. 

Early in the film she quizzes her son, Nicholas (James Bentley), on the “four hells,” a now-discarded formulation that broke the non-heaven afterlife into Hell, Purgatory, the Limbo of the Fathers (for the righteous unbaptized), and the Limbo of Children. That second Limbo, as a character points out later, was only for unbaptized children, but that doesn’t stop Grace from using it as an example of the eternal punishments her children might experience if they transgress God’s law. She punishes her daughter, Anne (Alakina Mann), by making her recite Scripture (notably, the expulsion from the garden and the binding of Isaac) and praying the Rosary on her knees.

Grace sounds, and sometimes seems, monstrous, but she is in a difficult situation. Her children are severely photosensitive, forcing them to stay inside with the curtains drawn at all times. Grace is caring for them alone: Her soldier husband (Chris Eccleston) never returned from the war, and the household staff recently abandoned her. She is at the end of her rope, but her faith is what has gotten her through so far. She genuinely believes that her harsh education will keep her children safe—in this life and the next. 

But mysterious things begin to happen in the house; things that even Grace can’t explain. They are precipitated by the arrival of three mysterious new servants: Bertha (Fionnula Flanagan), Mr. Tuttle (Eric Sykes) and Lydia (Elaine Cassidy), who Grace soon realizes aren’t quite who they claim to be. At the same time, her son has been waking up in the night screaming, and her daughter tells stories of ghosts wandering through the house. You might think Grace, as a woman of faith, would be open-minded about the supernatural. But she is religious, not spiritual: her faith is orderly and logical, an hermetically sealed metaphysical vision, and one in which the concept of eternal damnation can be reduced to answers on a pop quiz. In her overly domesticated faith, there’s no room for anything as silly as ghosts—which leaves her vulnerable to the truly mysterious.

Amenábar drew on his own Catholic upbringing in writing the film. “Religion gives you the answers. I think it’s not good to think that we have the answers,” he told film website Nitrate Online in 2001. “For me, it’s a journey for Grace and her children toward light, as a form of knowledge.” I would quibble with him on whether it’s wrong to have any answers—if I didn’t think any of Catholicism was true, why would I believe in it?—but he makes a good point about not letting what we know blind us to what we don’t (and can’t) know. 

In the film, shot by acclaimed Spanish cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe, the conflict between darkness and light—ignorance and revelation—is constantly present. Grace’s house is filled with great pools of shadow and shrouded in oppressive clouds of fog. But when the curtains crack or are torn down completely, pale sunlight stabs into the scene, revealing everything with blinding clarity. Similarly, Grace has to open herself to a spiritual understanding broader and stranger than the one she holds. Her own intransigence, she realizes, is a greater obstacle than any ghost, blinding her not only to the spooky events of the house but her own need for grace and forgiveness if the family is ever going to find peace.

While we may not have to deal with haunted houses (I hope not!), we all have times where our faith becomes too domesticated and we assume we have all of the answers. But God is always bigger. Even St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest minds the church ever produced, said at the end of his life that his work was “so much straw” compared to the full reality of God. We should continue to use the great gift of our intellect to explore the mysteries of our faith and improve the world, but we should also have the humility to know our limitations. We can’t know all the answers, not in this life. But the good news is: We’re not supposed to.

“The Others” is available on the Criterion Channel, Shudder and AMC+.

John Dougherty is the director of mission ministry at St. Joseph's Preparatory School in Philadelphia, Pa., moderator of America's Catholic Movie Club, and author of Finding God in All Films: A Contemplative Approach to Watching Movies. You can find more of his work on his Substack, Roll Credits.