Birth - a review

[Howard Schumann]

BIRTH

Directed by Jonathan Glazer 2004)

"As the moon dies and comes to life again, so we also, having to die, will rise again." - San Juan Capistrano Indians

Ian Stevenson, Director of the Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia, has devoted the last 40 years to the scientific documentation of past life memories of children from all over the world and has over 3000 cases in his files. In his book "Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation", Dr. Stevenson asserts that children usually begin to talk about past-life memories between the ages of two and four but that these recollections gradually dwindle when the child is between four and seven years old. Such is not the case, however, in Birth, a new film about reincarnation by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast). In the film, ten-year old Sean (Cameron Bright) suddenly appears in the house of a wealthy widow, Anna (Nicole Kidman) and announces that he is the reincarnation of her husband, also named Sean, who died ten years ago.

As the film opens, a man jogs in the snow in Central Park in New York City accompanied by the haunting score of Alexandre Desplat. After reaching an underpass, he hesitates, then collapses and dies. The film then cuts to the image of a baby being born and shifts the timeline to ten years later. Anna and her fiancé, Joseph (Danny Houston), are holding a party in the elegant East Side apartment she shares with her mother Eleanor (Lauren Bacall), her sister Laura (Alison Elliot) and her husband Bob (Arliss Howard). After Anna's friends Clifford (Peter Stormare) and his wife Clara (Anne Heche) appear, Clara excuses herself to go into the park to bury the gift she had brought from Anna (a plot point that will have repercussions later). When she returns, a dour looking ten-year old boy follows her into the party. The boy calls Anna into an adjacent room and announces without emotion that he is the reincarnation of her deceased husband and tells her not to marry Joseph.

Anna at first dismisses young Sean as a prankster but has second thoughts when her brother-in-law tapes an interview with Sean and learns some intimate details that only Anna's husband could have known. No scientific investigation is undertaken however to analyze any birthmarks, deformities, phobias, abilities, or addictions that might establish a link between the two. Anna and Joseph simply talk with the boy's parents but they deny that he has ever mentioned these thoughts before and there is no further investigation. Though reluctant, Sean's parents agree to have Sean stay at Anna's for a few days. When Sean summons Anna to meet him in Central Park in a spot that only she knows, they rendezvous at the underpass where her husband died and she begins to fall in love with the boy. This leads to some awkward moments as when the two share a bath together but the scene is innocent and there is no hint of exploitation.

Slow-paced, brooding, and atmospheric, Birth maintains a high degree of suspense throughout. While the film works as a compelling psychological thriller and metaphysical mystery, it labors under several misconceptions. One is that people reincarnate immediately, the other is that details of past lives are easily accessible to conscious memory. Despite its flaws in logic, writers Jean-Claude Carriére and Milo Addica keep the dialogue on a realistic level and the film is held together by Kidman's highly nuanced performance. One of the best sequences is a two-minute close up of Anna at a concert, her face moving through a range of emotions that make us wonder what thoughts are going through her head. While the ending lets us down with a contrived set of occurrences that put the film on safe neutral ground, Birth courageously reminds us once again of the essential mystery of life and death. On a more down to earth level, it also makes us aware of the pitfalls inherent in holding onto attachments that prevent us from living fully in the present moment.

GRADE: B+

[Chris Knipp]

Knowing you I can see how Birth would be one you'd go to, and that you'd have some knowledgeable things to say about reincarnation. Knowing me, with my rationalistic bent, you can understand I'd have reservations about even going to see it, but it seems to give rise to many interesting questions; I see it as the kind of film that's much more fun to talk about than to watch. However, it has come in for high praise for its style by critics and I may yet take myself to see it. I will then probably talk about it in very different terms, but I won't decide what I'm going to say till I've seen it.

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Knowing you I can see how Birth would be one you'd go to, and that you'd have some knowledgeable things to say about reincarnation. Knowing me, with my rationalistic bent, you can understand I'd have reservations about even going to see it, but it seems to give rise to many interesting questions; I see it as the kind of film that's much more fun to talk about than to watch. However, it has come in for high praise for its style by critics and I may yet take myself to see it. I will then probably talk about it in very different terms, but I won't decide what I'm going to say till I've seen it.

That's a good policy. Don't review the film until you've seen it. Seriously though, I think you may admire the style and the performances if not the content. It's message though muddled does provide for some interesting conversation.

[tabuno]

The path in unraveling the mystery in this movie is tattered somewhat by the need to travel two different paths in this movie that necessarily also need to come together in order to maintain the eerie tension and haunting possibilities. Yet the logic and the signs are there for one steeped in such movies to begin to become uneasy not because of a deliberate intention on the part of the director, but because some of behavior and script plot points don't necessarily feel right or consistent with the conclusion that the movie is attempting to lead us towards.

I was quite taken by Nicole Kidman's endless head shot at the theater and believed it was a remarkable piece in the movie, however, later in the movie similar head shots appeared to be overused and too gimmicky to me. The plot twist was wrenching in some ways and effective in others - the ending was also quite emotional considering what Nicole Kidman has had to go through herself. I was more accepting of the ending and don't believe that it really avoided controversy - the main thesis remained intact in this movie and the question loomed large throughout.

GRADE: B-

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by tabuno
The path in unraveling the mystery in this movie is tattered somewhat by the need to travel two different paths in this movie that necessarily also need to come together in order to maintain the eerie tension and haunting possibilities. Yet the logic and the signs are there for one steeped in such movies to begin to become uneasy not because of a deliberate intention on the part of the director, but because some of behavior and script plot points don't necessarily feel right or consistent with the conclusion that the movie is attempting to lead us towards.

GRADE: B-

I understand very little of the above. Could you explain what you mean in terms that even simpletons like me can understand.?

[tabuno]

It's probably impossible to explain my earlier comments about Birth without giving away important plot spoilers. I needed to be vague so as not to destroy the impact this movie may have on people who have not seen the movie. You may have to wait a bit longer until more people have seen the movie before I describe to you in more specific terms what I'm talking about.

All I can say (and this is probably saying too much) is that this movie is based on an important storyline premise that doesn't come true at the end and the attempt to shoot this movie in a way that will be consistent with the actual storyline while the audience is assuming another premise makes for an uneasy mix in my mind. Things don't appear consistent and thus the movie is more chaotic for me just because things can't be consistent since the movie's actual premise and the one's the audience is operating on are different. Character's are behaving at times it seemed to me during the middle of the movie that really betrayed the audience's initial assumptions about what is going on - the boy's behavior at the park.

[Chris Knipp]

Isn't this just saying what Howard already wrote, "the ending lets us down with a contrived set of occurrences that put the film on safe neutral ground"? I think that expresses it very well without giving anything specific away. This is what I have heard from various sources, also without their giving anything away. Roger Ebert says, "There seem to be two possible explanations for what finally happens, but neither one is consistent with all of the facts. At a point when the characters seem satisfied they have arrived at the truth, I believed them, but it wasn't truth enough for me." Another reviewer refers to a "lame third-act twist." Yet another says "the ending is a cop-out." Since this is a movie we don't want to know too much about going into it, that's already more than I want to know. I have still not seen the movie.

[tabuno]

The ending isn't so much as lame as is the problem with how the rest of the film gets there. It's the inconsistent plot twists and actual acting continuity that make the movie uneasy, not the ending that I don't believe leaves us on safe ground at all, except perhaps in a religious context. For me the movie hits very well on the topic of the soul and our conflict between the body and the spirit and what matters most in our own contemporary feelings of morality between two individuals. The concept of what we love, who we love, and how and why we love are all exposed in this movie, albeit unevenly (the ending excluded). Even with Nicole Kidman at the very end, there is a real feeling of confusion that is actually typical in many real relationships and how many woman actually behave as well as accept what they have found themselves in. Taken from a "reality-based perspective" movie, this movie actually might be significantly under-rated by others and even myself if I happen to ever see this movie again.

[Chris Knipp]

This is one of your most lucid expositions and an interesting point to look for when I finally see the movie, which I hope will be soon. The style has been much praised by some, though The New Yorker (whose critics I never despise), while adding their praise of that style, calls it "an appalling combination of distinguished talent and inane ideas." Your remarks here suggest that critics have misread the piece.

But what you seem to be saying is that it deals with ideas and ends in confusion, and that that's realistic because people usually do -- end in confusion, that is.

I don't often look to movies for ideas and sometimes when they seem to deal with them, as in I [heart, i.e., love] Huckabees, they disappoint. It made me think of Godard, who in his early days, anyway, before he lost me and stopped being shown much here, could actually make you wrestle with ideas.

What other filmmaker can?

[Chris Knipp]

Having finally seen the movie, I have written a comment which you will see below. Warning: SPOILERS!

Rebirth . . . maybe

Glazer's Birth is a strange follow-up for his first film, Sexy Beast, whose British-style gangster nasties featuring the likes of Ray Winstone, James Fox, and Ben Kingsley, seemed to some quite choice. The new effort is nothing like that. Birth raises the issue of reincarnation in an odd form: a man dies and a boy (perhaps) is immediately born who is that man, and who ten years later perceives the man's memories as déjà vu.. This boy (Cameron Bright) turns up at a party and approaches his widow, Anna (Nicole Kidman) with his strange claims. Anna initially dismisses them, but then, prompted no doubt by her inability to stop obsessing about her late husband, begins to take them seriously. And then -- don't read this if you want to be surprised by what happens -- the whole idea gets dropped when her husband's ex-girlfriend turns up and tells the ten-year-old boy that he's all wet. He thinks he's in love with Kidman, but the girlfriend has proof that the late husband was far more loyal to his mistress. Since the boy becomes convinced his feelings aren't the man's after all, he drops his claim.

The boy has been persistently telling Anna that he's Sean and he loves her. His name, like the dead man's, is Sean. Why should a reincarnated soul come in a person with the same name? A cynical answer is plot convenience dictates it. When the boy tells Kidman "I am Sean" and "I love you" in meaningful tones, she will know what it means and so will we.

Now the proof offered by the girlfriend -- again, don't read this if you want to be surprised -- was a packet of love letters from Anna to Sean that he gave the girlfriend, unopened, to show he loved her more than his wife. It seemed at first that these might have been where the boy Sean got his information, and that he was a poseur, a fake. But he hasn't seen these letters. Nobody but Anna would know what's in them. Hence the mystery of Sean's knowledge about Anna and her late husband remains unsolved. So maybe after all Sean is Sean.

But when Sean 'confesses' he's not Sean, Anna goes back to her new fiancé, Joseph, and marries him. Only a scene on the beach on the wedding day shows she's still not his. She is unhappy. The only "reality" the movie leaves us with is that Anna is still hung up on Sean. The reincarnation issue has been raised only to be dropped.

Birth unreels with generic tastefulness in the posh, airless apartment world of wealthy Manhattanites that Nicole Kidman also inhabited in Kubrick's Eye's Wide Shut, except this version is darker and more limited, simplified down to a few adults and a ten-year-old boy. Kidman has a Rosemary's Baby coiffure, but the boy isn't a spooky devil child. He's a Catholic choirboy type with a crew cut and a pretty face. He hasn't much personality. Nobody in the movie does. But he has solemn determination and great poise. He seems happy till his illusion (if that's what it is) is shattered.

Birth itself has a good deal of poise, though some will find its airlessness deadly, especially given the lack of follow-through. It succeeds insofar as it remains a solemn mystery. Glazer has made the movie with great restraint, and that preserves the mystery for a good while. The music's never portentous. Nobody overacts. The pace isn't pushed and there are no flashy trick effects. The physical impossibilities of an adult woman being with a pre-pubescent boy are faced when the ten-year-old Sean undresses and gets into the bathtub with Anna. This is the most talked about scene and Glazer carries it off tastefully. At the height of Anna's acceptance of Sean's claim, she finds a "solution": she and Sean will run away somewhere, and in eleven years, when he's twenty-one, they'll marry. What would Humbert Humbert say? Anyway, the girlfriend comes along to smash the dream.

This doesn't succeed for anyone. Believers in reincarnation are disappointed that the filmmakers have chickened out, and materialists aren't satisfied either, because we still don't know how Sean got all those ideas and that information. The deflation isn't crude. Glazer maintains perfect decorum throughout. But it still seems like the movie we start out with has been grafted onto another one. The two parts don't fit. And the second part is a feeble effort to escape from the complexities introduced in the first. Nonetheless Glazer and staff have maintained their somber style with some grace.