Annie Wersching
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Apr 22, 2017 · A divorcee's ex-husband marries a younger woman with a sinister past. The Other Mother is a 2017 drama film starring Annie Wersching, Kennedy Tucker and Kimberley Crossman.
- (529)
- Drama
- Sean Olson
- 2017-04-22
- Overview
- Differences Between Novel and Film
- Appearance
- Personality
- Powers and Abilities
- The Inhabitants of the Other World
- Trivia
The Beldam, better known as the Other Mother (in reference to her motherly disguise), is the main antagonist of Neil Gaiman's 2002 dark fantasy young adult novel Coraline, which was adapted into the 2009 film of the same name.
The Beldam is a powerful and malevolent witch/fey creature and the ruler of the Other World, accessed through a small door in the Pink Palace. She lures children into her realm by disguising herself as their "Other Mother" and creating beautiful things that make her world’s living appear to greatly surpass their real world’s living. Once lured, she sews buttons in their eyes which tethers them to her world, then consumes their flesh for strength, and keeps their souls as her prisoners. She is the arch-nemesis of Coraline Jones, whom she tries to lure in, consume for more strength, and imprison the soul of as her fourth victim.
The Beldam appears in both the novel and film versions of Coraline. In both versions, she takes the form of Coraline's mother, but has shiny black buttons where her eyes should be.
•In the book, the Other Mother is described as being similar to Coraline's mother, but with a few noticeable differences betraying her otherworldly nature: besides the black button eyes, her skin is pale and chalky, her fingers are described as "a little too long" with red claw-like nails, and constantly twitching. Her hair is darker and appears to be moving as if caught in a slight breeze. Unlike the film, her form doesn't change at all during the course of the story, though she is shown to have no reflection in mirrors (when questioned, the Beldam tells Coraline that "mirrors aren't to be trusted"). When the Cat scratches her face, she bleeds a black, tar-like ichor.
•In the film, the Other Mother is almost identical to Coraline's mother, but made "prettier"- her eye bags and neck brace are gone, her hair is neat and glossy, her nose is no longer crooked, and she wears bright red lipstick and more vibrant clothes. When angered by Coraline's refusal to stay, she transforms into a taller, more skeletal version of herself, with impossibly long limbs and neck and deep, sunken cheekbones. She seems to have more shapeshifting prowess than the novel version, able to look exactly like Coraline's real mother for a brief moment, eyes and all, only to quickly shapeshift into her "true" form once Coraline is in her clutches.
•At the climax of the film before Coraline escapes, the Other Mother's body has visibly broken down like the rest of her world: her skin is cracked like porcelain, her neck and torso are segmented and skeletal, her outfit is faded and abstract in shape, her two legs are replaced with a set of four spindly metal legs ending in sharp points, and her hands have worn away to reveal a "skeleton" made out of sewing needles. When scratched by the cat, she does not bleed, though her button eyes are plucked off, rendering her blind.
•In the book, the Other Mother uses an army of rats to spy on the human world. These rats are black with red eyes, and are able to speak in high-pitched, wheezing voices, mostly in ominous, foreboding rhymes.
•In the film, she has a group of mice employed by the Other Mr. Bobinsky in his jumping mouse circus. Their "true" form is that of a large, ugly rat, and in both forms, they have black button eyes like everything else in the Other World. The Other Mother's main method of spying is through the eyes of dolls that she makes in the likeness of her current victim. This is shown in the opening credit sequence, where the Beldam creates a doll identical to Coraline and places it in the human world for her to find.
The appearance of the Beldam changes throughout the movie. Her modus operandi is to disguise herself as a child's mother to lure them into her world - In Coraline's case, she disguised herself as Mel Jones, Coraline's mother. In all of her appearances, she has shiny black buttons sewn into her head where her eyes would be (which were ripped by the Cat in the climax of the film).
In her first appearance, she looked identical to Mel Jones, but with a better hairstyle, red lipstick, and no bags under her button eyes. After her heated conversation with Coraline, she elongates, becoming skinnier and taller, and with longer hair whom seemed to also become slightly more shiny. Also, her lipstick is now black instead of red.
Under her disguise as her victims' mothers, the Beldam appears to be a very loving and charismatic maternal figure, especially for troubled or bored children. Alluding to her archaic background, the Beldam speaks very eloquently, uses relatively old-fashioned language, and seeks to maintain a traditional family through loving (this appears to be genuine at first) discipline. She is also very observant and vigilant of the problems and desires her victims have in the real world. Through this, she recreates the Other World into becoming their idealized dream worlds.
The Beldam is highly skilled in the arts of motherhood. She is very good at cooking and sewing and is eager to play rough and daring games with her victims. Her creations are obedient to her ways and the Beldam frequently encourages them to do whatever they can to convince their victims to stay in the Other World forever. Even though her calm and composed demeanor can creep her victims out, the Beldam is extremely skillful in hiding her ulterior motives, no matter how intelligent or mature her victims are (i.e. Coraline). The Beldam frequently uses wordplay to disguise her ulterior motives and subtly taps her fingers every time to indicate this.
When her true nature is revealed, she instantly drops her loving maternal figure and becomes a cruel and authoritarian figure who is determined to do anything to consume her victims' flesh and trap their souls, no matter how twisted and sadistic these measures are. This includes torturing her creations, especially those who genuinely care for the Beldam's victims (i.e. Other Wybie and Other Father, along with Other Spink, Other Forcible and the Other Scottish Terriers and Other Bobinsky), so that they are driven to do things against their will, such as harming innocent animals and children.
She punishes her creations who are unwilling to harm others by mutilating and killing them. Her sadism comes to its fullest effect when she gouges out her victims' eyes, sews buttons over it without anesthesia and consumes their flesh and souls until they become empty ghost-like shells. Though she has no qualms in relishing in savagery, the Beldam chooses to maintain her charisma by disparaging her victims in a sweet and motherly tone and an extremely condescending and sarcastic manner.
Her love of games takes a darker turn as she challenges those who question her authority to participate in dangerous games to "prove" themselves. However, the Beldam is heavily implied to have planned these games from the very beginning and its presumed that she initially set these games up for her sadistic pleasure and boast about her power. Despite preaching about how those who disobey must be harshly disciplined, the Beldam breaks the rules of her own games if they are inconvenient to her agenda. This is shown when she outright refuses to acknowledge that Coraline has won the "game" of finding the eyes of the Ghost Children despite previously agreeing (albeit reluctantly) to Coraline's deal of letting her go if she won. This is because, without Coraline, she'd starve to death.
Perhaps her most distinctive trait is her "love". At first, the Beldam seems to genuinely love her victims, caring for them and giving them a world that they cannot afford in the real world. When she reverts to her true nature, the Beldam still claims to love her victims but in a much more obssesive and disturbing way. Her love, thus, could be described as how as a parsimonious miser loves his gold or in a more serious and accurate comparison, how a child predator loves his/her victims, considering the ages of her victims.
The Beldam holds near-omnipotent power over the Other World and is able to manipulate the universe into appearing whatever she wishes. However, she cannot create things out of scratch but rather recreate things that have already existed, twisting and changing them to suit her needs, implying that she has limited powers in the world she rules in. From this, fans speculate that the Beldam discovered rather than created the Other World. This theory has more weight for the novel since the Beldam may have human origins, which can implicate that the Beldam, at some point of her life, stumbled into the Other World and settled there. Regardless, her power over the Other World is vast, able to manipulate space, matter, and even the weather, summoning rain and lightning in an instant (complete with lightning bolts shaped like her clawed hand).
The rooms and homes of the Other versions of the Pink Palace tenants are much larger and more elegant than their real counterparts, and far larger inside than outside (especially true for the Other Spink and Forcible's theater). During Coraline's game to find the eyes of the ghost children, these places are transformed into darker, twisted, and more dangerous versions of themselves, and the occupants turned into monstrous versions of themselves. As the Beldam's power starts to wane with each child's eyes/souls found by Coraline, the house begins to wither away- in the movie, the house physically falls apart- wallpaper peeling, floorboards falling away, and walls vanishing until only the living room with the tiny door remains.
When walking out into the woods beyond the Other Pink Palace, Coraline discovers that the farther she goes from the house, the less detailed the trees become, become like a child's drawing of trees, or "the idea of trees" before finally the world ended in a featureless white expanse. The Cat explains that the Beldam only created enough of the world to impress Coraline, and anything beyond that was just emptiness. After walking for a bit more, Coraline eventually ended up back at the house, implying that the Other World is either very small or loops around itself.
She often makes bargains with her victims in order to obtain their flesh to feed upon, similar to how people make deals with the Devil in order to achieve fame, power etc. and is able to steal and imprison souls, which alludes to her demonic nature. The Beldam is also quite physically powerful as she is able to rapidly climb up a gigantic spiderweb when she pursues Coraline and is able to bang on the door so hard that the passageway also pushes forward as she tries to break the door down forwards. Despite being unable to exit the Other World when the door to it is locked, her hand is able to exit the Other World by pushing through the bottom part of the door. It is extremely powerful and can attack people and drag people in long distances and it is presumed that the Other Mother detached her own hand in order to send the button-eyed ragdolls to the real world as her hand acts like a "robot".
The Beldam is also quite talented in disguising herself to look like a completely different and an otherwise normal-looking human female compared to her skeleton/arachnoid form in order to lure and deceive her victims. She can transform into any appearance that she desires and can even transform herself into looking like a normal human being from the real world without the button eyes.
It is also noteworthy the the Beldam is able to store items within her own body. This can be seen when she swallows the black button key to prevent Caroline from escaping back to the real world again.
The inhabitants of the Other World are the Beldam's creations and like her, they have button eyes but they are created out of sawdust, like the button-eyed ragdolls that she sends to her victims unlike herself.
The inhabitants depend on the type of people that the Beldam's victims live within the real world so they could feel more comforted and be tempted to stay forever. They are albeit enhanced duplicates of the people that her victim lives within the real world and are fun and entertaining just like the Other Mother. The Other Mother's army of rats are her most loyal creations and are responsible for physically luring her victims into the Other World.
In Coraline's case, the Other World inhabitants are Other Father, the Other Mr. Bobinsky, the Other Mice, the Other Spink, the Other Forcible, the other Spink and Forcible's Scottish Terriers, and the Other Wybie. The Other Wybie is the only Other inhabitant that is completely sympathetic to Coraline and shows no willingness, even when coerced, to harm her.
However, as the magic of the Other World fades away as the Other Mother loses her powers and becomes more and more like her real self, so do the inhabitants of the Other World. They are in reality monstrous and rather demonic beings who violently attack anything that goes in their way and often have disturbing and distorted voices and screams, as seen when Coraline grabs the eyes of the Ghost Children from them during the game.
Most of them have limited free will as the Beldam sees them as slaves, fit solely for the purpose of luring her victims into the Other World. However, she gives some of the inhabitants more free will to make the illusion of their loving and friendly personalities more "genuine". This is seen with the Other Wybie, who was given the most free will since the Beldam knew that the cause behind most of Coraline's frustrations with the real world was Wybie's annoying personality.
However, this extended free will proved to be one of the Beldam's biggest mistakes since the Other Wybie used this as an advantage to actually try to help and rescue Coraline from the Beldam. This applied to a lesser extent for the Other Father but seeing that she needed to present herself as a proper mother (i.e. being the wife of a loving husband), it was probably a more pragmatic choice for the Beldam to make him a dutiful slave in luring Coraline.
•The name "Beldam" is a reference to a fairy-tale being, also known as "La Belle Dame sans Merci" ("the beautiful lady without pity") from the poem of the same name by John Keats. The poem tells the story of an unnamed knight wandering in a barren and haggard land, who encounters a beautiful and mysterious woman with bright and wild eyes who draws him to her secret grotto with claims of love, then puts him into an enchanted sleep. The knight dreams of ghostly beings and spirits of all kinds, who warn him that he is under la Belle Dame's thrall; when he awakens, the woman and her home have vanished, as he finds himself back on the hillside he had been travelling across before he met the woman. The word "Beldam" is also an archaic word meaning "Witch" or "Hag".
•The Beldam was originally the oldest (both from a "character's age" and "studio" standpoint) Laika villain (the former role being surpassed by Raiden the Moon King).
•Ashland, Oregon, the town that the Pink Palace is located in, was founded in 1852, approximately the same time the Pink Palace Apartments was initially constructed. It's also implied that the Beldam is as old as the apartment itself.
•When the Beldam speaks to Coraline, she sometimes refers to herself as "your (Coraline's) mother", most notably after she revealed her true colors to Coraline.
•The Beldam's desire to consume Coraline's soul is foreshadowed during the initial dinner scenes. Whilst Coraline and the Other Father eat regular food, the Beldam has nothing on her plate and instead, looks at Coraline with delight. The only time the Beldam is shown to eat is when she eats live cocoa beetles. This not only indicates that the Beldam only wants human souls but that she prefers to eat them whilst they're (her victims) still alive.
•The song that the Beldam hums while she is in the kitchen is the same song that played during the opening credits.
The Other Mother (also known as Beldam) is the main antagonist of the 2009 stop-motion animation horror fantasy film Coraline, which in turn is based on Neil Gaiman's 2002 horror fantasy novel of the same name. She is considered to be one of the most disturbing villains in the animated...
The other mother is the creepy villain who tries to trap Coraline in a fake world. She is a mysterious, manipulative, and evil witch who wants to steal Coraline's soul.
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- Sean Olson
- 11
The Beldam (also known as the Other Mother, in reference to her motherly disguise) is the main antagonist in the 2002 book Coraline, as well as the 2009 movie of the same name. She is a malevolent inter-spatial...
