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The Other Side
Birth gives a creepy take on reincarnation
by Molly Kincaid
Director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) was probably that freckle-faced kid in elementary school who delighted in scratching his fingers down the chalkboard and watching his classmates’ faces contort. His latest movie, Birth, is saturated with the same sense of perverse gratification that surely accompanies such an act.
The film opens with the blustery scene of a man jogging in a snowy park, eventually collapsing to an inexplicable death. Haunting orchestral arrangements along with grainy and yellowed imagery evoke the feel of an old photo, setting the eerie mood right from the start.
Picking up 10 years later, it becomes evident that the mysterious running man was the husband of Anna (Nicole Kidman), who is still tortured by relentless grief. Kidman’s papery complexion and rail-thin physique aid in illustrating her withdrawn, ghostly demeanor.
Resigned to get on with her life, Anna has finally agreed to marry long-time boyfriend Joseph (Danny Huston). Not long after their engagement, though, Anna’s resolve is shattered by the sudden appearance of a seemingly harmless 10-year-old boy named Sean (Cameron Bright). After intruding on a dinner party at the posh New York apartment of Anna’s affluent family, Sean insists on speaking to Anna alone, whereupon he frankly tells her that he is the reincarnation of her late husband, whose name was also Sean.
Though visibly shaken at first, Anna dismisses the preposterous notion and brushes the “delusional” little fellow out the door. But Sean’s persistence soon becomes hard to ignore. He sends a foreboding letter warning Anna not to marry Joseph and follows her around to an extent that, were he an adult, would surely result in a restraining order.
Bright’s acting is sharp and mature, causing both the viewer and Kidman’s Anna to waver between belief in his conviction that he is indeed her dead husband and fear of indulging the sick obsessive game of a juvenile sociopath. He lacks the habits of a typical child, such as fidgeting or whining, replacing them with piercing, demonic stares and stoic resolution.
Anna’s judgment, clouded by her ardent love for her late husband, leads her to succumb to the little boy’s wishes. Desperately hoping he is what he claims to be, Anna insists that her brother-in-law interrogate Sean in order to settle the question of his identity. Though the questions are intimate, he is able to answer them all with unflinching accuracy, thus hiking the creepy factor up another notch.
At one point, young Sean joins Anna in the bathtub, playing on her trancelike willingness to explore this new realm of sci-fi freakiness. Though void of sexual charge, the scene is ripe with a jarring sense of mental seduction and the feeling that Anna is completely powerless under the boy’s spell.
While the forbidden relationship between Anna and Sean continues, Huston’s Joseph progresses from initial composure to jealous seething. He eventually comes unhinged and throws the boy over his knee, spanking him profusely in a fit of rage. Though meant to purvey a sense of irony (in that Joseph is, in a sense, giving his fiance’s husband a spanking), the scene comes off as overdone and cheesy.
Aside from the occasional blunder, Glazer makes several directorial choices that heighten the film’s drama. By often focusing the camera on characters’ faces for uncomfortably long periods, he captures a sense of personal trauma that inhabits each one’s tormented mind. Zooming in on Kidman’s face while she attends an opera makes for a chilling scene; her moist twitching eyes and quivering chin are telling of her emotional jumble of passion, hope, shame and fear. The shimmering close-up also serves as a stark mirror image of the audience sitting in the dark movie theater.
Birth’s tangle of plot curveballs build to an unpredictable ending that could be likened to either a melodramatic soap opera at worst or a twisted Greek tragedy at best. But its suspenseful descent into the darkest crannies of the human psyche and pixilated hazy imagery make it a stimulating ride for any cinematic thrillseeker.
November 18, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 47
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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