Thoughts on Birth

     On Criterion, I watched Jonathan Glazer's 2004 film Birth, co-written by Luis Bunuel collaborator Jean-Claude Carriere, and starring Nicole Kidman, Danny Huston, Lauren Bacall, and Cameron Bright. I remember it being a controversial film when it came out, as the plot is that Kidman plays a widowed New Yorker named Anna, whose, soon to be remarried, is confused when a ten-year-old boy appears in her life, claiming to be the reincarnation of her late husband, Sean. The controversy was of a bathtub scene in which Kidman and Bright appear naked together, but while the scene is a little uncomfortable to watch, it's clear that both actors are not actually nude, are wearing private coverings that aren't in the camera's view, and the scene is handled delicately and is very brief. Rather, the film is about grief and love's transcendence, and Anna really wanting to believe that this is her husband's spirit coming back to her, especially as the boy knows personal things that only Sean would know in his marriage to Anna. The rest of her family is doubtful, and find the whole thing disturbing, worried about Anna being hurt by wanting to believe in this possible delusion.

    I liked how the film felt like a quiet thriller, and it really reminded me of Rosemary's Baby, both with Kidman's pixie haircut like Mia Farrow's, the setting of wealthy upper Manhattan in old apartment buildings that feel large and cavernous, and the heroine not being believed by her family and not being taken seriously in her convictions. Kidman is really vulnerable and emotional in this film, because she makes it convincing that Anna is falling in love with her husband all over again, trying to look past him being in a child's body, and wanting another chance to be with him, even hoping that they can marry when Sean is an adult in ten years, wanting to wait that long with wishful thinking.

    Cameron Bright, at ten years old, gave a very mature performance, as he had to act like an adult spirit being channeled through a child's mortal form, and talk about sexuality beyond his years with Kidman and Heche. It can be a little unsettling, and likely not surprising that his more well-known role later on would be as a vampire in the Twilight saga, performing an uncomfortable creepiness in his teen years.

    It was a little sad seeing Anne Heche, thinking of her tragic death in 2022, and in a scene where she corners Sean in an intimidating way, her eyes look cold and dark, and reminded me of Robert Shaw's memorable line reading as Quint in Jaws: "Y'know the thing about a shark, he's got  . . . lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. " Her pupils looked so big and dark to me, and with her smug smile, it made her character come off as more predatory, even if she doesn't really mean to be. It was just this moment in the film that really struck me with her performance.

    This was at the time when Kidman had, post-divorce to Tom Cruise, reached more to working with film auteurs and doing more unusual films, and getting more critical acclaim than she had in her 1990s Hollywood career. She had already been great in The Others, directed by Alejandro Amenabar, and continued her streak in arthouse offbeat films with Dogville (dir. Lars von Trier, 2003); Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (dir. Steven Shainberg, 2006); Margot at the Wedding (dir. Noah Baumbach, 2005); Rabbit Hole (dir. John Cameron Mitchell, 2010); The Killing of a Sacred Deer (dir. Yorgos Lathimos, 2016), and The Northman (dir. Robert Eggers, 2022). She is an interesting actress, who, in between doing more Hollywood and TV work, does like to jump into weirder stories and have more of a dry sense of humor when embodying these characters.

    Jonathan Glazer, who this year was nominated for several Oscars for his 2023 drama The Zone of Interest, about a family of a Nazi commander living the suburban idyllic life right outside the walls of Auschwitz, taking home the Oscar for Best International Feature Film (and winning for Best Sound for Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn), and in the 1990s, had been critically acclaimed as a music video director, for Radiohead's "Street Spirit" and Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity," among others. He made his feature film debut with the British gangster film Sexy Beast in 2000, which made Kidman want to work with him on Birth. In 2013, he directed the stunning sci-fi horror film Under the Skin, where Scarlett Johansson played a predatory alien in a seductive body form in Glasgow, a bit of a commentary on the image of Johansson herself as a sex symbol and being fetishized. His directing in Birth is very sparse and quiet, letting the scenes sink in for the audiences to interpret for themselves.

    This was a really interesting film to watch, and while I do think the ending takes a cop-out choice, to steer away from anything stranger after talking about the metaphysical for so long, I did like the rest of the film, and felt the controversy was overblown and overshadowed what was a unique and memorable film in the early 2000s.