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What's the Story, Mornin' Glory?
Birth
(2004)
Ten years ago a man died running and a baby was born.
Anna (Nicole Kidman) has been mourning the death of her husband for ten years. She finally decides to get married again to her boyfriend Joseph (Danny Huston). They announce their wedding date at her mother's birthday party and suddenly a ten-year-old boy (Cameron Bright) appears at her doorstep claiming he is Sean, her late husband. Deep down, Anna believes the boy, but when her family laughs it off, she does too. She convinces herself it's not possible, but the boy keeps appearing into her life, knowing intimate details about their life together. Anna begins to believe, but can't stand the thought of falling in love with Sean again and not being able to be with him. Soon Anna becomes consumed with the thought that her late husband has come back to her. Is this boy named Sean really the reincarnation of her husband?
You Learn Something New Everyday...
 It's akward to bring your fiancee to your spouse's grave.
Laws about kidnapping don't matter if the child is a reincarnation of a dead lover.
Zing!
No good lines here...
Survey SAYS...
Okay. All I can say is, what a head scratcher. Really, I have a hard time thinking out of the box on flicks like these. Before I could even attempt to write a review on this movie I had to check out the message boards on imdb.com, otherwise you would've gotten a very short review that consisted of "I don't get it". I still don't get it, but at least I'm in the same ballpark as everyone else. The people on the message boards were as confused as I was.
Birth was nothing like I was expecting it to be. The trailers on TV, which only ran for a few weeks, made it seem more like a sci-fi thriller or something of that nature. I wouldn't even know how to classify this movie. Anyway, I was expecting it to be a cheesy sci-fi thriller that possibly involved aliens (don't ask why, I dunno). A lot of people on the IMDB boards said that the movie was very "Kubrick"-like. I'll be honest, I've never sat down and watched a Kubrick film (it's on my to-do list, really), so I can't say if that's true or not. Before I watched Birth I was looking at reviews of it and a lot of people mentioned that it was "artsy" and pretentious. Clean slate, this is what I thought.
The entire flow of the film was very dreamlike. All the scenes had a fuzzy quality to them. Every movement made was very smooth and almost unnatural. I'm not really sure what qualifies a movie as "artsy", but I suppose this would be it. There were a lot of lingering scenes. The opening sequence alone was 2 minutes of a man running. There's a few scenes where we just see Nicole Kidman's face for more than a minute straight, no cut scenes or anything. There were also a lot of long pauses or just plain silence. If you didn't read the back of the movie then the first four and a half minutes seem agonizingly long and seriously make no sense.
The story itself was straightforward, but the end didn't make any sense to me. They don't really explain whether or not the boy was the reincarnation of her husband. A lot of it must be up for interpretation, but even I couldn't really wrap my brain around what the message was. Apparently if you're open minded there is no pedophilic undertones to be seen, but I think I'm rather open minded and they made me a little uncomfortable. It isn't the fact that a grown woman is taking a bath with a young boy, but that there are feelings of love and sexual tension within that space. In all, it's kind of glossed over. They don't really explore what the consequences might be if it were her husband living inside a ten-year-old boy. You would think that a movie that's trying to be so deep would at least touch on these things. Don't even get me started on the final scene that has no words at all.
Despite all the ambiguity and "artsy"-ness of it, I actually liked Birth a lot. I think that it's one of those movies that come together better the more times you watch it. It's definitely is a thinker. Birth is definitely not predictable. I had no idea where this movie was going the whole time I was watching it. There were no obvious hints or anything to reveal what the outcome may be. It's hard to guess how a movie like this will end. The concept for Birth was relatively new and refreshing. Nicole Kidman played the part really well (despite her horrid hair cut). So if you like long, quiet, lingering scenes, scenic shots, possible pedophilia interpretations, bad hair days, Anne Heche, and Godfather like potential husbands then this is the flick for you. As for us, we give Birth...
That Wasn't so Bad Was It?
I was left Feeling: Totally Lost on Me
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