Background of the Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

In this modern era, film has been growing to be an interesting industry for the people who want to express their creative thought and skill. Most of cineaste considers film as a media to share their ideas and opinions about some phenomena in the real life; and see it as a promising business as well since most people like to spend their spare time by watching film. Psychoanalysis has a special relationship with cinema before appointed as one of approaches method by a number of French psychoanalysis and art critics considered the most appropriate in cinematographic world. 1 Apart from perfect or not a film discussion which is using psychoanalysis theory, the text that come continually show that almost all of cinema elements, can be the object of psychoanalysis discussion. For example: director, the characters of film, the process of film making, the genre of the film, audiences and gender. In France, ever since psychoanalysis was born along with the cinema in 1985, filmmakers never stop talking about psychoanalysis; otherwise psychoanalysis experts also never stop talking about cinema. Various analogy and reason disclosed: that the creation of art, including cinema, takes place as the emergence of unconscious desire, that cinema has the ability to display images that are oniris like a fantasy or a dream, etc. 2 1 Anggadewi Moesomo, Psikoanalisis dan Sastra. Depok; PPKBLPUI, 2003, p. 59 2 This Paper Presented at the Psychoanalytic Training. Jakarta, May 27-30. 2001. Film analysis generally uses the character as an object that can be seen as human. 3 In this case a text of the character that can be analyzed, that is to find an implicit text into the unconsciousness of the character. One of the movies that get peoples attention, especially in the year 2009 is the Orphan movie. The movie was released on July 24, 2009. This movie was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. The movie has horror genre and starring Isabelle Fuhrman as the main character. Orphan is the movie tells about Kate Coleman and her husband John, are experiencing strains in their marriage after Kates third child was stillborn. The loss is particularly hard on Kate, who is also recovering from alcoholism. Kate Coleman, a mother who has two children named Daniel and Max, is depressed and always has a nightmare after her third child was died. To recover her depression, Kate and her husband —John decided to adopt a child. Finally, they adopt Esther, a 9-year-old Russian girl, from the local orphanage. While Kate and Johns deaf daughter Max embraces Esther almost immediately, their son Daniel is less welcoming. Firstly, there is nothing weird and everything is in the line like a happy family after adopted Esther. She can associate with her sister, Max, but his brother, Daniel, doesn’t like her so much, not like his father who loves Esther. But there is something wrong in Esther. She is very mature in her age and she doesn’t like other 9 year old child who always like play in outside. She just likes to paint all of time. Gradually, Kate realizes that there is something awkward in Esther ’s behavior. Esther doesn’t same like their first met. In her first school, Esther does n’t get the good treatment from her classmate who mocks her old-fashioned dress. Esther’s classmate is also tries to take Esther’s bible and attempt to strip off 3 Apsanti Djokosujatno, Psikoanalisis dan Sastra Depok: Universitas Indonesia, 2003, p. 112 her ribbons. That things make Esther scream hysterically and push her classmate until her leg was break. After that incident, Sister Abigail, the head of the orphanage, comes to their home to warn Kate and John that whenever Esther is around, bad things seem to happen, which is overheard by Esther. As Sister Abigail is leaving in her car, Esther pushes Max into its path, forcing her to swerve the car off the road. As Sister Abigail rushes over to see if Max is hurt, Esther kills the nun with a hammer. As Daniel learns about the death of Sister Abigail from Max, Esther overhears him detail a plan to retrieve the hammer to prove Esthers guilt. While Daniel searches the tree house, Esther appears with the hammer and drops it in front of him. Sprays lighter fluid on it and the floor, she sets the tree house ablaze. Daniel falls to the ground trying to escape the fire, and is knocked unconscious. Esther tries to kill him with a rock, but Max stops her. Kate, realizing what happened, attacks Esther but orderlies help John restrain her. As John takes Esther and Max home, doctors sedate Kate. That night, Esther tries to seduce a drunken John, who finally realizes Kate might have been right about her. He threatens to send her back to the orphanage and she runs crying to her room. Meanwhile, as Kate is coming out of sedation, she receives a call on her cell phone from a doctor at the Saarne Institute, who reveals that Esther is actually a 33-year-old woman named Leena Klammer. She has hypopituitarism, a condition that stunted her physical growth, and has spent most of her life posing as a little girl. The doctor tells Kate that Leena is extremely dangerous and has killed a number of people in the past; including an adoptive family whose father refused her romantic advances. From the explanation above, the writer would like to analyze the character problem of main character named Esther in Orphan movie with all her problems through Freud’s psychoanalysis theory.

B. Focus of the Study