Customer Reviews

Birth

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(47)
3 star:		(35)
2 star:		(32)
1 star:		(49)

 

 

This is a very strange movie.

The plot is this: A young woman's husband dies. Ten years later, she's finally about to move on with her life and remarry, when suddenly a 10-year-old boy appears, insisting that he's her dead husband, reincarnated. At first, she and her family and her fiance all try to laugh it off, but this boy knows things about her that no one else could know and he's, well, he's strange. He doesn't act like a 10-year-old boy. And he wants his wife back.

So, first of all, you have this kind of uncomfortable plot with Nicole Kidman and a 10-year-old boy contemplating sex and stuff. Beyond that, the movie is kind of artsy. There are long, slow shots and a lot of the film is subtle. It's not at all predictable or formulaic, and I think that's made some audiences uncomfortable. Hell, I think the whole movie has made audiences uncomfortable. It's an uncomfortable movie.

It's also a very interesting one.

Watching "Birth," I was reminded of some of Stanley Kubrick's later movies. The acting is exceptional and the movie takes lots of chances. It never takes the easy route. So, for all of those reasons, I really found it interesting and worthwhile. There were a lot of great "moments" that have stayed with me.

But if you're a person who tends to prefer mainstream Hollywood movies, you are going to HATE this movie. Truly.

This film is definitely different. Unlike many of the films made today, it doesn't think the viewer is stupid and everything needs to be explained down to every little last detail. By that alone, I find this film to be exceptional experience.

The premise, I have to admit, is quite extreme. A woman's life is turned upside down when a young boy shows up at her door, literally, and claims to be her first dead husband. She is only too eager to believe it is true.

However, I didn't find the story to be this films strength, but the emotion it was able to communicate through visuals and music. This film is shot quite beautifully. Rich colors, elegant set designs, dramatic lighting, grainy quality that evoke the memories of old film footages, they are all wonderful just to stare at. The music is also fantastic, doing a wonderful job complimenting the story and the scenery and not overpowering them, yet letting its presence be known.

What the visuals and the music achieve is evocation of feelings. Kind of feelings when one is watching an old 8mm footage. Feelings of memories. Sweetness, love, longing, bitterness, regret, hope, and such feelings that people dearly hold on to. I find this to be the strength of this movie and its approach totally refreshing. It doesn't explain or show or tell. It lets the viewer experience, through vision and sound.

Another factor that greatly contributes to this film's effectiveness is Nicole Kidman. Although I seldom find her acting to be of much notice, she was quite powerful in this film, allowing her expressions and gestures to communicate. One good example is the concert hall scene, just moments after she witnesses the boy, who claims to be her dead husband, collapse in shock. The camera remains focused on her, while the music plays in the background. She is shaken. Really shaken up. The boy has gotten to her. She might be starting to believe.

I have read some review that describe this scene as completely ludicrous, because camera remains on Nicole Kidman for so long and nothing happens. I disagree. Those who felt this scene ineffective neglected to appreciate her nervous expression, almost like that of a woman who got caught daydreaming being with another man, and the music, sound of brewing turmoil and passion.

If you are willing to engage the film, not wait to be engaged, then I think you will find this film to be quite different and memorable.

It takes a lot of guts to make a "thinking movie," titillating the mind rather than bloodlust or hormones. And Jonathan Glazer takes a risk with "Birth," a bizarrely beautiful film about reincarnation and spiritual ties -- a risky maneuver, but one that pays off. The result is beautiful and strangely solemn.

A jogger named Sean dies in the park -- and a baby is born. Ten years later, the jogger's widow Anna (Nicole Kidman) is reluctantly celebrating her engagement to yuppie fiancee Joseph (Danny Huston). Suddenly a ten-year-old boy named Sean appears (Cameron Bright) and announces that he is Anna's husband, reincarnated into a boy's body.

At first, Joseph tells the kid he's wrong, and Anna brushes the kid off as a nasty prankster. But Sean knows intimate details about her marriage, and has a strange passion behind his claims. She begins to believe that he is telling the truth -- that he is her Sean, reborn. She reexamines her life and her future, as old wounds reopen and questions are raised.

A lot of fuss has been made over "Birth's" nude bath scene. Don't worry -- it's not sexual or prurient, but strange and almost surreal. It takes guts to include such a scene, even in a movie that is more about the spiritual than the physical. In a nutshell, it's a movie with heart (even if a logical brain is a little lacking)

And that scene aside, the movie is richly ambient, darkly beautiful, and raises an array of troubling questions. Is Sean really a reincarnation, or is he simply a young boy who worships a thirtysomething woman? Does Anna simply want to believe he is? And is spiritual love enough to conquer all? These questions, by the way, are left hanging in the air -- to do otherwise would seem almost silly.

The movie moves at a very, very slow pace -- it takes patience to fully absorb it. But the atmosphere is strangely dreamlike, slow and sensuous and almost outside real time. The outdoors is snowed over, and the interiors are beautiful and quiet. The final quarter is thought-provoking and open to interpretation, but does suffer from a rather unsatisfying feel.

Nicole Kidman does a magnificent job in this film. She takes the character of Anna and fills her with overwhelming emotion. In one powerful scene, she attends an opera with Joseph, and the camera lingers on her face and eyes; Kidman communicates silently everything Anna feels. Cameron Bright does a somewhat more spotty job -- with Kidman, he successfully comes across as a grave man-in-a-boy's-body. With anyone else, he just seems sullen. And Lauren Bacall gives a solid, sometimes funny performance as Anna's mom.

While it never entirely addresses its own issues, "Birth" is a magnificent, atmospheric film, with a spiritual twist. Ignore the controversy -- see "Birth" on its own considerable merits.

The plot of this 2004 film almost made me want to ignore it. But it stars Nicole Kidman who's one of the most versatile actors in the business and it's a low-budget independent film targeted at the art-house market.

The plot revolves around a young widow, Anna. Her husband has been dead for ten years and she is about to remarry. Her future husband, Danny Huston is deeply in love with her. Lauren Bacall is cast as Anna's mother and everyone is New York Penthouse wealthy. Suddenly, in the middle of the happy couple's joyous engagement party, a ten-year old boy appears. Later, he returns, claiming to be the reincarnation of Anna's dead husband. Cameron Bright is cast in this role and he seems so adult that it's hard to believe he's only ten years old.

From the very first scene I was hooked. The script is tight, the setting perfect and the background classical music a perfect complement to the mysterious goings on. Most of the characters are disbelieving. And they are annoyed that Anna can't stop thinking that the young boy is really her former husband. All the other characters are realists and honestly believe that the child is just making thing up. But how does he know all the intimate details of Anna's former marriage? And could it be Anne Heche, cast as a friend of Anna's with a secret of her own, who holds the key to the mystery?

The film moves fast and there is not a wasted word or an extra scene. And the acting is nothing short of remarkable. The appeal of this film to the general public is limited but I, personally, loved it. And I highly recommend it for sophisticated audiences only.

Memory, love, and loss are the themes of this troublingly beautiful film from Jonathan Glazer. At once, visionary and often disturbing, Birth asks lots of spiritual questions, but mysteriously, offers no easy answers. Nicole Kidman holds the threads of this daring, audacious, and gorgeous looking film together with a truly virtuoso, spellbinding and heartbreaking performance. Her portrayal of a sensitive, grieving young women who's life is turned up side down when she discovers that her dead husband is reincarnated in a ten-year-old boy, is a tour-de-force of acting, and proves yet again that she's currently the greatest actress of her generation.

Combining the brooding, gothic with the psychological thriller, Birth has a strange, multi-layered mood and that moves mellifluously, smoothly, and ambiguously forward. With symphonic confidence Glazer has created a story that explores more the emotional than the supernatural. The film opens with a runner suddenly collapsing beneath an underpass, as if caught in the darkness between two worlds. Suddenly the story jumps ten years into the future where Anna, (Kidman) a young, sensitive woman is preparing to marry. We soon discover that the man who collapsed was her husband Sean, but she is set to marry Joseph (Danny Huston). Joseph and Anna have been living in a vast and posh East Side apartment owned by Anna's mother, a rugged, controlling matriarch (played by a steely Lauren Bacall). On the night of Joseph and Anna's engagement party, a young boy (played by Cameron Bright) with a round, solemn face crashes the party and claims to be Sean. He pleads with Anna not to marry Joseph.

At first Anna and her family treat the young boy as a joke, and they do their best to discourage his advances by using both humor and pathos, and later hostility. Anna's mother humors him, while Joseph drifts from tight-jawed skepticism toward violent jealousy. But it is Anna's reaction to him that is most important: she gradually moves from annoyed skepticism to shock and disbelief, as she gradually begins to realize that perhaps he is Sean and begins to fall in love with him again. Nicole gives such a beautifully nuanced, performance, and with her hair cut short and dyed dark red, the director films her in long, silent close-ups that allow her to register large feelings with tiny gestures. In once scene, where Anna and Joseph attend the opera, the camera lingers on her face, catching every maddening distraction of a thought as it darts across her face while a jumble of conflicting emotions take hold of her. Anna is a woman who has pulled herself together after a traumatic loss but her grieving remains desperately incomplete and disconsolate.

The film has dark, somber yet gorgeous ambience, and the moody, lush score add to the agonizing melodrama of high privilege and repressed feeling. Anna is at first troubled by the boy, but at the same time she becomes terribly attracted to him even though she thinks he may just be a kid with some bizarre fantasies going on. Much has also been made of the nude bath scene between Anna and the boy, but the scene is far from sexual and never gratuitous, and it shows just how far Anna is willing to go - perhaps she's attracted to the same qualities in the boy that she saw in her husband. Birth is a terrific picture that takes serious cinematic risks and it is unafraid to explore the nature and, at times, terrible consequences of love and loss. The movie seriously questions the notion that perhaps the concept of loving whom you want is ultimately an unfeasible thing to preserve. Mike Leonard October 04.

This is a film that from the beginning lets you think that it is something that it is not. Still, it has its moments, however faintly creepy they may be. The film starts off with the death of a man while jogging in Central Park in New York City and the birth of a boy. Both events occurred ten years prior. They are juxtaposed together, giving rise to an inference that these two events are pivotal and interrelated, They are, but not, perhaps, in the way that one might be led to believe during the course of this film.

Anna (Nicole Kidman) is a stunning woman, whose husband, Sean, died ten years before while he was out jogging in Central Park. She has been mourning all this time but has been wooed for the past several years by a kindly and persistent suitor named Joseph (Danny Huston). They are finally celebrating their engagement, when a ten year old boy (Cameron Bright) appears on their horizon with the startling announcement that he is her long dead husband, Sean. At first, his announcement is treated as a joke, and the boy is sent on his way. The boy's father is a tutor in the building where Anna lives.

The boy persists with his assertions, and Anne's fiance Joseph confronts the father about his son's declaration. The father is surprised and tries to get the boy to promise to stay away. Even Anna's own pleas do not persuade the boy to cease and desist. Finally, the boy's parents agree to let Anna's brother-in-law, Bob (Arliss Howard), who is a medical doctor, question the boy. To his shock and surprise, the boy knows some details that only Anna's husband, Sean, and Anna could have known. His wife, Anna's sister, Laura (Alison Elliot), is incredulous, as is Anna's mother, Eleanor (Lauren Bacall).

The boy persists in his assertions that he is Anna's husband, Sean. Coupled with the intimate details that he gives out with perfect timing, Anna now believes what her heart tells her must be true, although her head tells her that it cannot be. Even Sean's best friend, Clifford (Peter Stormare), now believes the boy. It is Clifford's wife, Clara (Anne Heche), however, who holds the key to the truth, not only as to the boy, but to ending Anna's grieving.

The film is shot in somber, neutral, muted colors with subdued lighting. This suits and underscores the somewhat understated, restrained mood and dialogue of the film. It is as if everyone were holding back something. When someone lets go, as Joseph does in a moment of insanity and engages in what some would term child abuse but what others might say was well-deserved retribution, it seems even more violent that it actually is. Anna is clearly still grieving for her long dead husband, although she is somewhat in denial, or she would not be so taken in by the assertions of this child to the point that she allows the boy to take off his clothes and get in the tub with her where she is already naked. That is definitely a creepy, unsettling, uncomfortable scene.

Some of the film is implausible. The fact that the parents allow their ten year old son, who is claiming out of the clear blue to be Anna's husband, stay overnight with Anna in her apartment is simply unbelievable. Moreover, when all is said and done, and the issue of whether the boy is or is not Sean is resolved, the film leaves the biggest conundrum of all, that of the boy himself, unresolved. It is interesting that nowhere in the film is there a name referenced to the boy, other than that of Sean.

This film has its pluses, but it is overwhelmed by its minuses. Quite frankly, the handling of the situation, involving the purported reincarnation of Sean, by all these otherwise intelligent, seemingly educated people, is moronic and simply not believable. So, the problem with the film is not inherent in the acting or direction, both of which are good, but in the screenplay itself. The faintly creepy scenes with Anna and the boy are somewhat distasteful. In the end, the audience feels as if it were hoodwinked, as the motivation for what transpired is never satisfactorily explained or alluded to in a way that makes sense, making for an ultimately unsatisfying film experience that is neither here nor there.

"Birth" was honestly one of the best films I've seen in 2004! Forget all the negative reviews delcaring the film had questionable taste. It's not awful in the slightest. Though the finale was less than impressive that's no excuse for disregarding the rest of the film.
"Birth" is an extremely sad but beautiful art film about a woman who is remarrying for the second time since her husband drops dead 10 years ago and out of the blue comes a stange 10 year old boy claiming he's the late husband reincarnated. It's a great premise that promises for some unexpected twists and turns. However, the film fails to deliever and that's what makes "Birth" different from the rest. Instead of creating a thriller, Jonathan Glazer puts together a low-key, moody, and thought provoking melodrama. Watching "Birth" is also a treat. The cinemaphotography is pitch perfect. The prefromances are top notch and the music, oh the music, it is absolutly beautiful. And as for "the bathtub scene" that pisses alot of people off is honestly not that big of a deal. I feel that it's what Anne Heche's charater tells the little boy that's far more creepier and disturbing. See this film!

This movie absolutely entranced me. I missed the first 15 or 20 minutes, but I wanted to see it enough I thought it wouldn't matter. I saw it with my mom and she didn't "get it." I didn't get it either, but it got me.....thinking. I had to go see it again, and was actually highly anticipating the first part I had missed thinking there was something there. There was. I've always liked Nicole Kidman as an actress. She always does good work, but for me, this movie made me see her in a whole new light. Her performance, as well as Cameron Bright's, was magnificent. Like watching a train wreck in slow motion. For me, this movie was about the frailty of the human mind after a traumatic loss and how for some, the grieving never ends. It also displays the power of self-delusion and how someone in a state such as Anna's can be manipulated...even by a child. This movie is definately going in my DVD collection. It was very interesting, intriguing, and kind of confusing. I think the reason people are reacting the way they are is because there's no black and white to it. That's the thing with the human condition, there is no exact science, no answer that is always right....it's very subjective and open to interpretation......just like this film. I must also mention the score to this film is magnificent. It's like a lullaby. I can't wait to get the score on CD, it was eerie, forboding and highly emotive, and very comforting, all at the same time. I think in a few years, people will look back on this film and maybe then they'll "get it."

At the end of the movie, I witnessed one of the most audibly dissatisfied audience leave the theater. I was slightly irritated with the movie as well because the ending felt like the director was laughing at me and saying, "gotcha". On the other hand, this film is a treat for those who have an appetite for psychoanalytical storylines.

Storyline: Based on the trailers, I went in expecting a movie based on supernatural phenomenon- reincarnation. This is a movie of a woman (played by Nicole Kidman) still in love with her deceased husband. The film starts out ten years after the death with a ten year old boy showing up at her doorstep claiming to be the reincarnation of her husband. Kidman (who is nothing but brilliant as a torn woman) who is initially skeptical starts to believe the boy. Ending: heartbreaking. Turns out the boy had found some of Kidman's old letters and somewhere in his mind started to believe he was the deceased man reborn. Well another analysis could be that towards the end when the boy learns of his infidelity to Kidman's character in his previous life, his fear of her finding out is more overbearing than him having her in his new birth.

Perhaps the director was trying to rationalize the theme of reincarnation. He takes a middle of the road option which sort of leaves a lot of room for either side of the thinker to draw their own conclusions. I believe this dilemma where we had to use our own thinking, was the root of much displeasure to an audience more in tune with definite conclusions.

So psychoanalyze this: Kidman who spent ten years getting over her husband is back to square one. The boy really believed that he was her husband.

This is a technically brilliant movie- from sets to acting, to direction and narration.

Ten years ago a man named Sean, who did not believe in reincarnation died and a baby boy was born, both in New York City. The man was married, and on the day that his widow is celebrating her engagement to another man, the boy who shows up. He informs the woman that he is Sean, and that she cannot remarry because she is still his wife.

"Birth" is a look at reincarnation that takes a different tack from other films where an old soul is in a new body. First of all, director Jonathan Glazer's film is purposefully vague on the rules of the game. At one point the woman, Anna (Nicole Kidman), does what anybody would do confronted by such circumstances. She asks the young boy (Cameron Bright) a test question about somebody she once told her husband about. Young Sean admits that he does not know the name, but, he says with eerie confidence, he will know the person when he sees them.

This is a film that wants to have it both ways in a couple of key regards. First, it wants both those who believe and those who are skeptical to find ample evidence to support their perspective. Of course, this is important to such a film, because keeping the ambiguity and doubt going as long as possible is important. Second, young Sean says things that speak to wisdom beyond his years one moment, and then he is playing on a swing like a 10-year-old the next. This relates to the first point, because every time he provides another private detail of Sean and Anna's life together we are inclined to believe, and when he acts like a petulant child, we are forced to reconsider.

Glazer hides the key to his mystery in plain sight. Before young Sean and Anna meet at her birthday party, we witness a nervous Clara (Anne Heche), who comes up with an excuse not to go upstairs. Instead, she runs out of the building, goes off into a wooded area, and buries the present she has bought. Then she buys a substitute and takes it upstairs. Clara and her husband, Clifford (Peter Stormare), were friends of Sean and Anna, so what they think about the young boy matters. But then everybody in Anna's family has an opinion about young Sean. Her imperial mother, Eleanor (Lauren Bacall), sees the boy as a threat, while her sister, Laura (Alison Elliot), makes it clear she will not believe any of this nonsense. But Laura's husband, Bob (Arliss Howard), does not know what to think. These are people from the upper class, so dealing with something this messy is beyond their competence. No wonder that Anna's fiancé, Joseph (Danny Huston), is the one who loses patience with what is happening.

The formal and sometimes stilted dialogue of the script reminded me of Woody Allen's "Interiors," which, of course, is just the sincerest form of flattery with regards to the cinematic work of Ingmar Bergman. That is why one of my first thoughts while watching "Birth" last night was that it was nice to watch a European film without subtitles. There was just something so Continental about this film, which probably has to be with Jean-Claude Carrière being one of the screenwriters, and I have no doubt that a lot of people will not be accessible to this film because of the sheer weight that Glazer gives the dialogue. This is underscored by the film's most transcendent moment, where the camera stays on a close up of Anna's face for several minutes while she is at a concert, as she becomes a believer.

But the attraction here is the psychology of the characters, whose lives are being shattered by just the possibility that this is all true. "Birth" might not make it clear how much Anna was devastated by Sean's death. We know that it took years for her to agree to go out on a date and years for her to accept his proposal, but it is not until we realize how desperately she wants it to be Sean that we understand his character. One of the reasons I found "Birth" compelling was that I could relate to the motivations of the main characters. Whatever problems the film might have with dialogue and plot, the characters ring true for me on a most basic level.

It dawned on me when watching this film is that Nicole Kidman is one of those actresses who looks most beautiful when she is smiling through her tears, and she has a couple of opportunities to do that in this film. I wish they had given both Bacall and Zoe Caldwell more to do in this movie, but "Birth" really does come down to Anna and young Sean. Everybody else can make up their mind as quickly or on whatever basis they want to, but the only judgment that matters is that of Anna (and of one other character, as I suspected).

Bright's performance reminds me of that of Keisha Castle-Hughes in "Whale Rider," a movie I had seen once before she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress. I applauded the nomination based on my fond memories of the film and the scene where Pai gives her speech on the meaning of her name and her grandfather. But when I watched "Whale Rider" I was surprised at how often Castle-Hughes did nothing but look intently at someone, while the audience invested her character with depth and emotional coloring. The same applies to Bright, who repeatedly looks at the adults around him with a slightly tilted head and intense gaze, which also fills in the gaps in his character. Again, this will be a flaw for many viewers, who are not going to be willing to participate that much in making the film work.