Susan Year Itch

Birth Wusses Out

Jonathan Glazer, 2004

Look, it’s Big!!

Wait, no, it’s the opposite of that. That joke didn’t work as well as I wanted. Anyway, my brother’s been on my case to watch Birth for a long time, but seeing as how we don't always agree*, it took me awhile to get around to it.

I’ve been trying to put these reviews together for both Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Closer (Judefest 2005). The first one was giving me trouble because I just kept typing “No! No! No! No!” over and over, and Closer I liked, but couldn’t think of anything to write about besides “I will never trust anybody. Love isn’t real. Jude’s not so hot all the time. No! No! No! No!” So you can see my dilemma. No wonder I haven’t heard yay or nay from grad school yet; they’re probably hanging out in their offices laughing it up.** LAUGH IT UP, GRAD SCHOOL, BECAUSE HERE COMES BIRTH!

Birth has a strange feel to it, like it should be a fancy 80s movie starring Dudley Moore and, well, Nicole Kidman. The lighting is low, and, and most of the action takes place in a very, VERY posh and classically decorated Manhattan apartment. The music is distinctive and light-hearted, causing even more confusion, since we’re dealing with a heavy and possibly ridiculous subject. It all works.

OK, the premise behind this movie is that a 10-year-old boy, Sean (Cameron Bright,), shows up in Anna’s (Nicole Kidman) life, claiming to be the reincarnation of her dead husband, also named Sean. Anna is thrown by this, since she is newly engaged to this guy Joseph (Danny Huston). Other items to keep in mind: Anna AND Joseph live in a giant Manhattan apartment with Anna’s mother (Lauren Bacall), her sister, her brother-in-law, the token black housekeeper, and a crapload of posh stuff.

Little Sean can spout out enough facts about Anna to convince her that maybe Dead Sean is really and truly staring at her through his little eyes, and soon we begin to accept this as fact.

The questions begin to surface:
1. Isn’t it sort of awful to think about this 30-something woman actually considering starting an intimate (GROSS) relationship with a 10-year-old boy?
2. When is Joseph going to flip his lid, finally?
3. How can this possibly work out well for anyone?
4. Wait, why are they all living in an apartment with their MOTHER?

Birth ends up working out in a weird way, and I’m about to spoil it for you. Clara (Anne Heche), who reveals that she was Adult Sean’s lover – she actually says that, I didn’t use the word “lover” voluntarily – busts Tiny Sean by figuring out that he’d read a bunch of lette--- you know what? It’s too long to go into and too confusing if you haven’t seen it. I’ll sum up: “Director Jonathan Glazer is a nancy.”

The film begins with a death and a birth, which we are meant to believe happen simultaneously, as Adult Sean jogs into a tunnel and Young Sean is squeezed out of one. At this moment, director Jonathan Glazer indicates the “truth” through shot juxtaposition: Young Sean equals Adult Sean reincarnated. No matter how much the rest of the film tries to question this fact, you have this major, defining clue on which to fall back. The problem is, you spend the whole movie trying to justify the love between a woman in her thirties and a boy in short pants. You try and try to make it seem OK to yourself, half of you identifying with Anna and half of you identifying with her skeptical family. You start thinking, "What if this happened to me?" and some of you probably make a note to go check out some books about reincarnation, just to explore this idea further. You work yourself up to feeling sorry for the kids' parents, summarily swept aside in favor of his newfound "manhood," and you practically almost go online and buy some Amtrak tickets to a remote Western town just so Anna and Sean can have some goddamn privacy.

This is the best part in the whole film. One
very long close-up shot where you can see someone
completely unravel. Don't listen to the rest of this review,
seriously. I liked this movie a lot.

Woops! You're an idiot. Turns out Sean is faking the whole thing. The film wants to give the little guy the benefit of the doubt and allows Sean to explain that he actually in a way believed that he truly was a reincarnation, but in truth, it just scares itself out of pushing any envelopes. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a little relieving, actually. This way we don't have to compromise any of our natural revulsion towards child molestation, and we can walk away from Birth guilt-free, but it's a huge letdown. We'd almost gotten ourselves to the point of completely questioning everything we believe in, and it was about to be pretty liberating.

And I'm positive that Jonathan Glazer actually meant for Sean to be what he claims he is. After all, he not only gives us the death/birth imagery in the first few minutes, he crafts Sean's character into the only person in this sea of dangerously oblivious and neurotic Manhattanites who has any sort of conviction. Sean tends to either soothe or enrage Anna's family with his utter tranquility about the whole thing. At the end of the film, Anna marries Joseph and we're privvy to a little meltdown she experiences at their wedding, but at this point, we don't blame her. Sheesh, we just had one ourselves. On our couches. To our cats. It's pretty exasperating to let go of a lot of well-justified cynicism and let in the hope that true love conquers all, just to have it dashed to pieces. My cat, of course, slapped me in the face and told me stop being a sissy. It's a good movie anyway, and getting close to pushing a boundary is better than not knowing there's a boundary in the first place.

*Oh my God, I just realized that the tagline for Crash is "You think you know who you are. You have no idea." Was your world just rocked?
**Since this was written, I've actually begun both grad school and a long-distance relationship, and I'd like to use those as excuses, both for blogging and for being generally absent in all of yo' lives.