From its completely uninformative title and its
vague, cryptic beginning to its ambiguous ending, the new movie Birth presents its audiences with a puzzle
of a generally preposterous kind, with a most unsatisfying solution.
Although it constantly hints at the possibility of
crossing the rigid boundaries of suspense into the rich field of horror or even
science fiction, the film deliberately withdraws from any real engagement with
the potentially fascinating or even dangerous matters it initially raises. It
settles instead for a kind of domestic melodrama, a study in the persistence of
grief and the difficulties of commitment.
The picture begins with a disembodied voice
apparently concluding a lecture while an unidentifiable runner jogs through a
snowy landscape. The runner, presumably the speaker of a sentence about
reincarnation, slows down, collapses, and, presumably again, dies.
The primary story then opens, as the prose on the
screen informs us, 10 years later, with a shot of young woman visiting a grave,
followed by a party celebrating the engagement of Anna (Nicole Kidman) and
Joseph (Danny Huston). Just before entering the elevator to attend the party,
one of the guests (Ann Heche) runs outside and buries the gift she has brought
under some leaves, a puzzling action that ultimately resolves at least some of
the film’s central mystery.
That mystery revolves around a strange young boy
(Cameron Bright) who intrudes into the party and calmly informs Anna that he is
Sean, her dead husband, and she therefore cannot marry Joseph. Despite the
obvious absurdity of the statement, the boy’s insistence intrigues and disturbs
Anna, who still suffers a profound grief over her loss.
She sends him away, but he returns again and again,
following her, leaving messages, steadfastly maintaining his claim. Moreover,
when Anna, Joseph, and her family question him about personal details of the
original Sean’s life, he appears to know all the right answers.
Sean’s imperturbable persistence reawakens all of
Anna’s old memories and feelings, which grow into a kind of obsession with the
possibility of reliving her past love. Obviously the boy’s intrusion upsets her
relationship with Joseph, whose mildly amused annoyance at the boy’s claim
smolders into anger and finally explodes into physical violence. When she and
Joseph break their engagement, Anna, irrationally convinced of Sean’s reality,
plans to run off with the boy and wait until he reaches adulthood and they can
marry.
The movie’s bizarre premise and subject initially
hint that it will explore a number of relevant contemporary themes, among them
the notion of the child as both victim and villain. Certainly the deadpan
composure, monotone delivery, and affectless flatness of Cameron Bright as Sean
suggests some of the youthful menaces of horror film, from The Bad Seed to Village of
the Damned and all those Children of
the Corn flicks. The threat dissolves, however, in the sheer silliness of
the central idea and the implausibility of Anna’s obsession.
In keeping with those hints of horror, the film also
flirts coyly with the obvious sexual possibilities in the relationship between
Anna and Sean. She asks him if he will be able to satisfy her needs, if he
knows what that means. In answer to her questions, in one scene, which ends in
an ambiguous dissolve, he undresses and climbs into the bathtub with her. The
resolution of the movie’s puzzle retains a touch of the kinkiness that pervades
the relationship, depending once again on the sexual history of the original
Sean.
Perhaps in keeping with its utter implausibility,
the picture proceeds on an oddly abstract level, with a kind of unreal
stylization. Though set against the landscape of contemporary New York, it
seems detached from that visible reality, taking place mostly in the shadowy
and somewhat claustrophobic interior of Anna’s mother’s luxurious apartment.
Although we see both Anna and Joseph in their
respective offices, we have no idea what profession they practice. We never
even know anybody’s last name. The lack of specificity presumably emphasizes
the interior of Anna’s consciousness, the obsession that grips her, even the
faint possibility that in the grip of her obsession she imagines more than she
actually experiences.
Since he rather resembles Kidman, at least in this
movie’s makeup and lighting, the casting of the impassive, rigidly controlled
young Cameron Bright as Sean also suggests some of the inwardness of Birth. Kidman herself appears fey and
faunlike, as distant from ordinary reality as the plot and characters; her
acting implies overtones of barely contained hysteria and hints of actual
derangement. The final sequence, a wedding that should insure the resolution of
the mystery and the dissolution of the grief, somewhat ambiguously suggests
that she will never really recover from either the past or the present Sean.
Birth, starring Nicole Kidman, Cameron Bright, Danny Huston, Lauren Bacall,
Alison Elliott; written by Milo Addica, Jean-Claude Carriรจre, Jonathan Glazer;
directed by Jonathan Glazer. At Pittsford Plaza and Henrietta Cinema through
Thursday, November 11.
This article appears in Nov 10-16, 2004.
