Birth (Jonathan Glazer, 2004)

[Matt]

People seem to be accepting the ending at face value. Is it possible that what really happened is more ambigious than the characters let on? I think so.

Irrespective of what one thinks of the ending, whether or not

SpoilerShow

the kid really is Sean

, as Franco said above, the film is really about Anna's inability to move on emotionally and what she is willing to do with her life because of it.

[milkcan]

The ending is great because it really does deliver what the film's bizarro story is about: how Kidman's character is able to handle what that boy did to her, and to confront her own personal response to it.

When she's staring into the camera during the wedding shoot- which recalls the opera house scene- and when she's aimlessly wandering through the sand, Glazer is able shift focus onto what his film's story is ultimately, and intimately, about: that of Anna's tragic past and the big steps she's about to take in the present, her love for her ex and for the current man.

And how about the whole "green couch" bit- funny and wicked!

[Polybius]

Having not seen the film, I have no stake in this matter. However...

I would be remiss in not pointing out that I've read several reviews from generally perceptive critics taking the same tack, i.e., that it's ending is too pat and even trite. So it's not like someone just pulled that out of thin air.

[Matt]

So, nobody has any faith that the co-writer of 6 Bunuel films, the writer of Monster's Ball, and the director of several mindfuck music videos could have concocted an ending to a film that is deceptively tidy?

[jorencain]

I'm completely with you, Matt. I don't know how anyone can view it as an open and shut case. I don't have anything else substantial to say that hasn't already been said, but I think "deceptively tidy" is a great way to put it.

[kieslowski_67]

If they want to make a mysterious/psychological thriller, the ending is a totally let down.

If somehow the creators wanted to follow the footsteps of Dreyer and Von Trier to pull out an emotional roller coaster about faith and love, they should have taken out the second scene. The movie would have worked much better if the audience had not known in advance that the young Sean was born after Anna's husband died. Now we are dealt with the hand that this kid is a fake from the beginning and we kept asking ourselves why Anna had not asked the kid some intimate questions in the beginning that only her late husband could have answered.

[jorencain]

The movie would have worked much better if the audience had not known in advance that the young Sean was born after Anna's husband died. Now we are dealt with the hand that this kid is a fake from the beginning...

Uuuuhhh, what? Wouldn't he be a fake if he was born BEFORE Sean died, as opposed to after? I may just not be following your logic, but I'm confused now.

[Andre Jurieu]

Uuuuhhh, what? Wouldn't he be a fake if he was born BEFORE Sean died, as opposed to after? I may just not be following your logic, but I'm confused now.

I'm thinking the same thing. How would he be the re-incarnation of the husband if he was born before the husband's death? I always figured death was a prerequisite for re-incarnation and re-birth.

[nick]

I just want to chime in and say that I agree that the ending is not as cut and dry as some people have made it out to be. Please consider the following a spoiler:

My understanding is that even sean himself is unsure if he really is the sean from her past. His self-assurance is challenged when he learns that the real sean was unfaithful to his wife. However this does not discount the idea that sean could be reincarnated and only remember a portion of his former life. This revelation confuses the boy who then begins to doubt himself. He tells Anna he was wrong, that he's not really sean. But it seems he tells her this to avoid hurting her with the fact that her husband was not as great as she believes.

I probably could go on dissecting many different scenes. My wife and I discussed this film for hours afterwards. I think that to look at this film as having such a clean ending is misunderstanding the subtleties in the acting and the story.

[kieslowski_67]

The movie would have worked much better if the audience had not known in advance that the young Sean was born after Anna's husband died. Now we are dealt with the hand that this kid is a fake from the beginning...

Uuuuhhh, what? Wouldn't he be a fake if he was born BEFORE Sean died, as opposed to after? I may just not be following your logic, but I'm confused now.

I was not really thinking about reincarnation. That scene basically gave the audience the identity of the young Sean in advance, while Anna and her fiance were still trying hard to figure out the veracity of the boy. The suspense was all gone and the audience were already thinking about the consequences when the family members took turn questioning Sean's identity.

[jorencain]

Sure, but that was obviously a choice made by the filmmakers. I don't think that suspense was really what the film was about. By putting that birth scene there, particularly after Sean's opening voice-over, it immediately creates the dichotomy between rationality and believing what you hope/want to be true. This film takes place in the real world; it's like "The Sixth Sense" or something with a goofy twist ending. All that is diffused by those opening scenes, and it allows us to think about the real world implications of Nicole Kidman's character, her grief, and the inability to fully move on from a tragedy like that. In the end, it's really a moot point, I think, whether or not any reincarnation happened.

[TedW]

In the end, it's really a moot point, I think, whether or not any reincarnation happened.

+1

Though Sean is not reincarnated, as it turns out, who cares anyway? The film might've been better had the scene in the beginning, with him in the park, continued to play instead of being truncated... then the audience would've known that Sean was not the husband, we could've been spared the lame, Hollywood-style digressions into "is he/isn't he," and the film could've focused more squarely on the part that's actually interesting: Kidman's total inability to process her grief and the resulting awful consequences.

I was underwhelmed by this one, sorry to say. The style is clearly ripped from Rosemary's Baby, down to the apartment and Kidman's haircut, and I'm not sure it added anything to the experience beyond pastiche (I will, however, revisit the notion of indicting bourgeois values... just as soon as someone adds two hours back onto my life). Harris is great, I'm a fan, but I didn't even think this was close to his best work. The yellow-skin tone thing is becoming less of an artistic choice and more of a mannerism.

That said, I do believe Glazer is someone to watch.

[peerpee]

SPOILERS, OF COURSE

I came away from the film understanding, what I thought was quite clear, that Sean had indeed been reincarnated, but that the dalliance with Heche's character in his "previous life" was but a vague memory to the reincarnated Sean, something which the boy quickly realized was true and became ashamed about. With this information he decided it was best to withdraw from Anna's life.

Thus elevating the whole thing to a mad level that a few folk in this thread may not have appreciated.

See:

Though Sean is not reincarnated, as it turns out, who cares anyway?

Hmmm!

[souvenir]

I came away from the film understanding, what I thought was quite clear, that Sean had indeed been reincarnated, but that the dalliance with Heche's character in his "previous life" was but a vague memory to the reincarnated Sean, something which the boy quickly realized was true and became ashamed about. With this information he decided it was best to withdraw from Anna's life.

Thus elevating the whole thing to a mad level that a few folk in this thread may not have appreciated.

That was my impression also, but only after thinking about it a little bit.

[jcelwin]

SPOILERS BELOW (a lot of them, so don't read unless you have watched the movie!)

I was not planning such a ramble, but here is is anyway...

Just finished watching this movie last night, and was quite impressed. The performances were especially impressive.

After Sean shows up I remembered that he probably took whatever was buried in the park. I think most people that remember that and think about it will probably realise that whatever it was probably had the information about Annas husband (I thought it was probably a diary). Also, while watching it I thought that the reason that the woman might have this information was because she was seeing Sean, as this is probably the only reasonable reason that she might have come into possession of such details.
Thinking this however probably doesn't really change the way that you view the film. The ‘twist' isn't really a ‘twist' after all. It is given away too early in the film and doesn't call into question what has happened. The film obviously focuses on the characters and their emotional experiences (Anna's particularly) and this ‘twist' only helps to further it.
Like has been pointed out before, this is more about how Anna and the people around her react to the situation (and how Anna ‘morns' her husband).

Even though it seems that there is no evidence of Sean being reincarnated as the young boy, there is still is some ambiguity. The woman that told Anna about Santa is known to Sean but not in name. Does this mean that there is a picture with her description in a letter? Sean also knows where Anna's husband died. But obviously this could not have been written in a letter as he was already dead. You can make explanations for information like this being known but it would be unlikely.

The creators left enough ambiguity so that everyone can make up their minds, but I don't think that they believed he was reincarnated. Nor do I think that the ending tells that he was reincarnated, not in the way that everyone seems to think.

At the end of the film Sean says that his mother thinks it was a ‘spell' this is probably the best way it is described in the film. The ‘spell' first starts when Sean finds the letters.
Sean actually believes that he is Anna's husband, the only other person that thinks he is telling the truth is Anna. All the other characters think that he is just messed up kid. Perhaps the spell was that of Anna's memories. In the letter Anna wrote to ‘her' Sean. This was the Sean that she knew, the one that she loved and who loved her in the same way. The relationships that ‘her Sean' had with others, was seen through her eyes. She didn't see the affair he was having or his full relationship with his best friend.
When his mistress meets the young Sean she knows that it isn't Sean, not the Sean that loved her, because that Sean would have come to her first. And as she says, she would have explored it, which perhaps shows her sincerity that he isn't Sean. Not the Sean that she remembered.
Sean's best friend, Clifford, also knows straight away that this is not his old friend. Not the friend he remembers (not ‘his Sean'). When he says this to Anna she still does not waver, because she remembers Sean that way.
Even when it is revealed that he is not Sean, Anna's mother says that she never like Sean. Regardless of the facts that she may have found out about Annas dead husband before this scene, the way that she states this about Anna's husband indicates that she knew a different Sean also, and that the boy is different perhaps the boy is someone she likes even after all that happened.
While Sean may have not been reincarnated, Anna's memories of ‘her Sean' were. Sean obviously believed that he was Anna's husband; someone that loved her and no there, someone that was perfect and maybe better than just someone's ‘stupid son'. The ‘spell' didn't reincarnate the dead husband; it gave birth to the memories of Sean that Anna still hadn't gotten over. Memories her fiancé had tried to ignore, while persisting forward instead of facing them head-on. But, it becomes more difficult when the memories become a ten-year old boy. But this was just a ‘spell', one that was cast when he tore open the (love) letters from Anna.

At the end were see that Sean has gone back to school and is once again another child being photographed, Anna has obviously had more difficulty moving on. Standing on the beach obviously reminded her of her dead husband; she could be morning the loss of that husband, or perhaps she could be morning the loss of her memories about the Sean ‘she' loved.

[Jem]

Did anyone have any thoughts on Danny Huston's violent outburst at the recital? His character gave me the impression that he had some sort of hidden agenda for Anna. I thought his outburst was perhaps a premonition of what was to come and infact Sean was a vehicle for Anna's dead husband to get her away from Joseph.

I also got the sense from Anna's family that Joseph was still an outsider even though he was marrying Anna, the look on Lauren Bacall's face after his outburst confirmed this.

[Polybius]

Sorry to rekindle this thread after this much time, but I just got around to seeing this a few hours ago and I wanted to share a thought or two.

First off, this probably wouldn't have been on "To See" radar without this forum. I take your opinions seriously, even in disagreement and the force of the consensus motivated me in this case. Having now seen the film once, I can say that while I don't think quite as highly of it as most of you, I'm glad I watched it and plan to watch it again.

I agree with the Kubrick allusions (specifically the ball in the lobby and the Barry Lyndonish spanking, more on that later) and in general (the frosty atmosphere and sterile interiors.) In spite of the relentless gloom (it's even cloudy in the one scene, the wedding/beach epilogue, that isn't set in Winter), the city looks rather more vibrant than Kubrick's recreation of it in Eyes Wide Shut (which I always took to be a quasi-nostalgic portrait of it in the mid-50's when it was Stan's Look stomping ground.)

In re the Jospeh Flip Out, Jem is right about Bacall's character and the earlier mentions of the Bunuel type observations on their withdrawn WASPy reserve are all pretty much dead on, in my opinion. There's a certain amount of dark, droll humor in that when you have time to replay it in your mind. At full speed, it's not really apparent (and any of us who have witnessed real violence knows that it's a lot like that: furtive, awkward, flailing.)

The humor comes from the fact that the Joseph goes to all that trouble: chasing a kid around in front of guests and musicians...pulling the whole "I'm cool, let me go" bit, then (unsurprisingly) renewing his chase, pulling the piano into place to shield him and, after all of that, simply spanks the kid. You would think that after all that trouble he'd at least want to punch him, if not grab his throat and start throttling him.

The film (and the score helps in this, tremendously), has a real, palpable sense of (for lack of a better term) suspense throughout, after Sean shows up and makes his announcement. That sense of dread, that something subtly unreal might be happening, reminded of Peter Straub's novel Julia. (A version of that was filmed, called Full Circle, ironically enough starring Mia Farrow, but I haven't seen it.)

There are times that you think that it may be true. His very self assurance, calm and matter of fact as it is, begins to wear on you (as it did her) after a time. (Parenthetically, it was a good choice to get an, um...aesthetically challenged kid to play that role. It would have been a little too Get Out Your Handkerchiefs if he'd been a 10 year old Rickey Martin type.)

[Oedipax]

Just to add on to the Kubrick references in the thread, I recieved the four newest volumes in the Director's Label series this week, one of which is dedicated to Jonathan Glazer. I actually find his volume of video work to be pretty underwhelming. The video for Massive Attack's "Karmacoma" is set in a hotel with long hallways very reminiscent of The Shining, and there is an eerie set of twins as well. What surprised me more is that there is also a Barton Fink reference with a writer at his typewriter in another room, and later in the video the camera dollies by and we see his bed has been set on fire as in the ending of the film. There are other rooms with other characters, but I wasn't able to detect any specific referencing there, although it could simply be other films I'm not familiar with.

The problem is, the references are just kind of there, they register as flat. I remember reading an account of Godard at Cannes in 1980 or so (if Sauve Qui Peut (la vie) competed, I assume it did) and Paul Schrader confiding to him that he had taken bits from A Married Woman for one of his films. Godard without missing a beat replied, "It's not what you take, it's where you take it to," or something to that effect. I don't think Glazer takes his references anywhere interesting in his videos. Similarly, his video for Blur's song, "The Universal," is very much an homage to A Clockwork Orange. But the song and the video seem at odds tonally (and not in a good way), and once again it just feels like Glazer is recreating without reinventing in some way.

I would like to add, though, that I think his videos for Radiohead (particularly "Karma Police") are very strong, and his video for Nick Cave ("Into My Arms") is one of the best I've seen. Kind of a pity that Cave doesn't like it.

[skuhn8]

Well, after much wait I finally got around to watching Birth last night with the wifey. I was lucky to go into this film never having heard or read comment or review from any source. These are my thoughts below. Forgive me; my wife thought the film stupid and wasn't interested in talking about it, though I found it very stimulating. I really need to find friends who appreciate cinema.

Very nice to visit the house that Kubrick built. I, too, caught the homages to Kubrick with the doorman's ball-throwing (The Shining) and Joseph's self-destructive attack on Sean (Barry Lyndon), as well as some of the stylings gleaned from Rosemary's Baby. This is the kind of stuff that pisses the wife off because I have to show off my knowledge of cinema by commenting (I don't have friends to talk movies with). But those were just little wink-wink nudge-nudge moments for the initiated I suppose.

I appreciated some of the non-Hollywood aspects, the subtleties and omissions one would expect in a more mainstream picture:
First off, Danny Huston was some clever casting. With that face one would expect him to be “the bad guyâ€

[hangthadj]

Wow, I am so glad this thread was revived. I can honestly say that Birth is one of my favorite 4 or 5 films of this decade so far. I saw a story on it in some Indie-Music magazine before it came out in theaters and was intrigued but never saw it. About a month ago I saw it used for $5 and figured I might as well pick it up. I watched it alone in the comfort of my own house and was completely blown away. It stayed with me throughout the next few days and each time I look back on it, I get that same enthusiasm, discomfort, carbonation feel inside me that I had while watching it.

I will also say that I agree with the few who have mentioned that the ending is deceptively tidy. I don't think by any means this is an open and shut case, and thats what makes the film stick with me, so. This thread has been a great read as well. And while the Kubrick and Dryer comparisons are mentioned, the Bunuel influence has been mentioned less. Jim Emerson has an excellent write up with stills here...

[godardslave]

While i have my doubts about rating this film quite as highly as some of you, and im not sure the directing deserves such lofty comparisons, i will be happy to say that Nicole Kidman's performance in this film is quite brilliant.

[colinr0380]

SPOILERS ... At the end were see that Sean has gone back to school and is once again another child being photographed, Anna has obviously had more difficulty moving on. Standing on the beach obviously reminded her of her dead husband; she could be morning the loss of that husband, or perhaps she could be morning the loss of her memories about the Sean ‘she' loved.

More spoilers!

I think this is the heart of the film, not whether the boy is reincarnated or not. As Bacall's character says - "I never liked Sean anyway". It's a throwaway line but coming after the revelation of his mistress you realise that the adult Sean not only didn't love Anna, but he had no respect for her, so he fooled around with other women.

I found the film to become deeper and much more powerful once the 'reincarnation' angle was revealed not to be that. The film doesn't take the 'boy who cried wolf' approach to the boy's realisation - it hurts him to realise he is not who he has been claiming to be as much as it does everyone else.

I like the way the audience is pushed through suggestion (and what they already know about the film going in) into looking for affirmation that Sean is being reincarnated. The moment juxtaposing Sean's death with Sean's birth (!) has already been discussed, but I think another big moment is the first scene with Sean in the lobby watching the people turning up for Anna's party, including Clara and Clifford, ending with Sean following Clara into the woods to bury the present.

As an audience member, primed by knowledge of the 'reincarnation' aspects of the plot and the death/birth juxtaposition scene I was immediately thinking of the boy as the reincarnation of Sean, waiting outside the party for an opportunity to confront Anna. It is only thinking back over the film that I realised that of course he'd be there since he was the doorman's son and this scene was included not to show that the boy is being drawn to Anna, but to show how he is intrigued by Clara's actions and finds the letters.

It is a magnificent beginning because it is presenting its information in such a way that it doesn't tip off first-time viewers (in fact a first-time viewer might even think that the reincarnated Sean is following Clara to confront her!), but on a repeat viewing the reality of the situation is revealed.

I completely agree with Matt about how it is about the reactions of those left behind more than a ghost story, (although of course it could be thought of as more of a ghost story than films with spooky apparitions flying about, since it deals with how we are haunted by our memories and attachments to those we've lost). I really like the way we have a moment of saying to ourselves "the stupid bloody kid" when we realise that the young Sean isn't the older Sean, but that is (or should be) immediately overwhelmed by the performance of Cameron Bright who shows just how heartbroken he is to realise that he isn't what he thought he was - he wasn't a confidence trickster as everyone from Eleanor to the maid called him, but was incredibly sincere in his affections.

A lot of praise should go to Nicole Kidman's performance as Anna, portraying her disbelief changing to complete acceptance to the point of almost going on the run with the boy, but the film is a definite two-hander in that Cameron Bright has a similarly difficult process of self-realisation to go through and pulls it off brilliantly. After the confrontation with Clara and realisation that all the letters he read - the letters that he thought were written from Sean to Anna, and which were obviously so eloquent that just through reading them he fell in love with Anna without ever having seen her, and he identified with (and wished to be) Sean so much that he truly believed he was - were actually written to Clara instead, proving definitively that he is not the dead man, he is devastated.

The next great part of the character is that Sean is honest enough to admit his mistake to Anna rather than keep the charade up once he has his realisation. The second scene in the bathtub between Anna and Sean is shattering, waiting for him to reveal the truth and then take the consequences all while sitting naked in the bathtub. As she says, he really is a child in that scene, childish in his belief that wanting to be Sean meant that he would be, and childish in his openness and honesty in telling her the truth (which resonates with the Sean she loved who never told her he was having affairs). I also have a suspicion that this second scene was another reason for the inclusion of the 'controversial' first bathroom scene, so when we return to the bathroom we aren't so focused on the nudity as sexual, but on the boy being vulnerable and exposed to Anna.

I think it is also the reason why when Bacall says "I never liked Sean anyway" I got the impression from that simple sentence that she liked the boy and understood that he was sincere in his belief, even if he was misguided, and so was not as harsh towards him as she had been when he was making his claims.

I think Nicole Kidman is also magnificent in this film, conveying how deeply she was in love with the dead man, how difficult it was for her to move on, and how this impacts on her new relationship where given the horrible choice between her new lover and the chance of being with her previous one, she would choose her previous love. Danny Huston also does a great job of conveying not the 'evil new man in her life', but a seemingly decent person who realises he will never replace a spectre. I think Jem's point is a good one - how much is Anna and her families quick reaction to Joseph's attack of the boy a way of expressing their disapproval of Joseph themselves? The ghost of Anna's love for Sean would have been something that they would have both had to face in their relationship even without a boy turning up claiming to be her past lover which just forces the issue. Also, with that ambiguous ending I still wondered whether their marriage has any future. Did Anna go back to Joseph in a 'fall back manoeuvre', trying to reclaim what her life was like before she met the boy? Is Joseph deluding himself in returning to her?

And what an ending, amplifying the tragedy of the boy's realisation that his real love was in service of a sham relationship - Anna's deep grief on what should be a happy day, her inability to move on from what was the love of her life in ignorance of how little Sean actually thought of her.

Both the boy's and Anna's stories get to the real issue of the film - how love for another person can only be an individual reaction and how we are constantly manufacturing our realities to just get through life. Just because Sean didn't love Anna, or that the boy Sean didn't turn out to be the adult Sean didn't mean that Anna or the boy's personal feelings should be seen as less genuinely felt.

[Antoine Doinel]

Collin, those are some great insights, and I agree that the "reincarnation" is the film's red herring and that the overall arc is about Kidman's character's still unacknowledged grief for her dead husband. The closing shot is absolutely shattering.

I would just like to add that in addition to my love for Birth (which deserves a much better DVD treatment than it currently has), the score is phenomenal. Alexandre Desplat is one of the best composers working today.

[ltfontaine]

Having come so late to the party, I only revive this thread to encourage others who haven't done so to see this remarkable film, one of the richest, most moving and most formally accomplished Hollywood movies of the last decade. The mystery at the movie's core is gripping enough, but the real suspense for me, watching the film, lay in anticipating the moment when the filmmakers were inevitably going to sunder their fragile narrative spider's web by “solvingâ€

[lord_clyde]

Just watched this and Sexy Beast back to back. My god, it's as if they were directed by two completely different people!
Ben Kingsley definitely makes Sexy Beast, but I can't say I'll be revisiting it anytime soon. But Birth is a straight up work of art, a masterpiece to paraphrase everything that has already been said.
I agree that Glazer's music videos are underwhelming, but watching Birth I can't help but wonder if he introduced himself as 'Stanley' on the set and then became Johnathan again once it wrapped.