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On the other hand, the film is seriously flawed by a fundamental misconception that arises from a fundamental disagreement among students of the novel. Some say the ghosts are irreally real; others say they are hysterical fantasies developed by the governess, who has repressed a passion for her employer. Both explanations are probably true, and so are several others. James was almost certainly writing on many levels of meaning at once; moreover, he was shrewd enough to see that the tale gained fresh horror from every possible explanation. But the men who wrote this picture, Truman Capote and Playwright Archibald, unhappily press hard, much harder than James did, for the psychiatric interpretation. They have obviously failed to perceive that in suggesting a normal, everyday basis for the ghastly phenomena, they must inevitably relieve the spectator of his nameless horror of what happens. But isn't horror, when all's said and done, the one important experience this tale is intended to communicate?