Birth

Birth (Director: Jonathan Glazer)

Birth had a limited release on October 29 and is now getting a re-release this Friday. Glazer's other notable work is Sexy Beast.

Birth is an absolutely enfuriating movie, not from the standpoint that a ten-year-old boy is trying to court a much older adult woman, but from the way the movie is scripted. The story, if you don't know, involves a woman named Anna (Nicole Kidman) who has lost her husband, Sean. Ten years later, she's ready to get married again to a man named Joseph (Danny Huston), and move on with a life that apparently has been spent mourning the death of her husband. At this point, a child named Sean (the creepy kid from Godsend, Cameron Bright) enters her life to tell her that he is her dead husband, reincarnated, and she mustn't marry Joseph.

For two big scenes in which the child Sean can say something to back up his claims, he prefers to remain silent or to say simply, "I'm Sean," and while this can give a viewer a sense of suspense, it is also maddeningly inept. Whether or not he is Sean, you'd think that he'd try to offer some details so that he isn't quickly ushered out of the room every time. Finally, Sean talks to Anna's brother-in-law, Bob (Arliss Howard) and gives a taped interview where he offers some details. Are these confirmed by Anna or anyone else? Hell no! She and everyone else just sits there, listening. Most don't believe it, including mother Eleanor (Lauren Bacall) and sister Laura (Alison Elliott), but of course for a provacative movie's sake, Anna does. Never is there once someone saying, "Yeah, Sean is the only one who could know something like that."

Perhaps that's the way the filmmakers like it, but it just isn't credible the way people act. We know Anna believes the story, so much so her judgment goes out the door. She goes quite insane over this, and don't think for a moment that Nicole Kidman doesn't deserve her Golden Globe nomination, because she's excellent. I think the message is that Anna, after mourning for so long after an untimely death, wants it to be true so badly that she begins to believe it. I just think it needs a little bit more for an audience to be convinced. And just because someone says they are another person and has details to back it up, wouldn't attraction be a factor? Are we saying love is merely in the small details we know about another person? Certainly, a ten-year-old boy can't attract an older woman no matter what he knows.

And here's the other thing that makes me furious. The above paragraph, I must have changed and re-written about ten times because the movie is a puzzle box to get around. Almost any point I have about this film, the filmmakers probably have an answer for, and tell me, "Hey, kid, that's the point." Hey, I refuse to believe it anyway. I think a woman like Anna would have deep psychological problems, and would find little boys attractive other than Sean, if this is what the movie is asking me to swallow.

Of course, if the filmmakers are trying to be ultra-coy about whether or not Sean is Sean, they shouldn't have put a scene in the very beginning that ultimately is going to be racing through your head for the entire picture until it is finally explained, which of course has everything to do with the plot. They could have cut this scene down and it would have been a nice little shocker.

I can applaud Glazer for doing things in films that mainstream directors don't do, like having long takes, but as a co-writer (with Milo Addica (Monster's Ball) and Jean-Claude Carriere (Sommersby)) he had to realize this would anger people--first and foremost for the statutory law that it toes the line with, and second for the intentional lack of information.