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Birth
I just saw Birth in a near empty cinema. What an extraordinary movie! It's so rare, these days, to get lost in a film. I don't mean that director Jonathan Glazer and his screenwriters (Milo Addica, who wrote Monster's Ball, and Jean-Claude Carriere, who collaborated with Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel in the 60s and 70s) lose control of their storytelling. Quite the opposite. What we have here is a story told with such mastery it seems entirely fresh and new. It's disorientating precisely because we don't know where it's going. Of course, we know some of the basics from reviews, advertising and the rest. You probably already know, for instance, that Nicole Kidman plays a widow on the verge of remarriage when a ten year-old boy pops up in her apartment claiming to be her dead husband, Sean. Her initial reaction is disbelief, then anger and denial. But there is something about this boy: he knows things about her that even her fiance doesn't know.
You could say it's implausible. So what? It draws us in, that's what counts. Anna suggests that Sean must be under some kind of spell - and that's how Glazer & Co. envisage love - as an enchantment... or a curse. And like the surrealists they are, they prize this condition as an elemental force, a power stronger than death, perhaps. Against this, the exquisite manners, the cultural pretensions and high society living of Anna's quintessentially civilised family crumble to an empty charade. Anna's mother (Lauren Bacall) urges her to marry Joseph (Danny Huston), a man she palpably does not love and to smile and put a brave face on it; it is the sensible thing to do. But it is also a devastating betrayal of Anna's love for her first husband.
Neither of these may have any relation to the real Nicole Kidman, but fuelled by media gossip, rumour and innuendo, they're very much in the air, and they both help bring Anna's dilemma into focus. Her love may be a sort of madness, but it has more truth in it than the conventional relationship she's about to enter into. Kidman is terrific here. But, watching Birth I was reminded how much of what we credit to actors actually comes from great direction. There are a number of very powerful scenes which surely owe at least as much to Jonathan Glazer as to the cast. To hold a close up of Anna at a classical concert for what seems like minutes, for example, takes real courage on his part, as well as hers. Or a terrific shot of Danny Huston staring out a window overlooking Cental Park (reflected in the glass) tells us everything about his pain as he realises he's lost her affection, but for all we know the actor was actually thinking about his dinner or his dog. The emotion comes from the context, the cutting, and the music (the soundtrack by Alexandre Desplat is magnificent and highly original, even better than his outstanding score for Girl with a Pearl Earring).
This is former ad-man Glazer's second feature. The first was the Pinterish gangster flick Sexy Beast, a brilliant debut in many ways, but a flashier, hollower exercise than this film. Birth is a remarkably brave follow up and it could so easily not have worked. Even now, working so well, it's never going to be big box-office. But Glazer's matured as a filmmaker. There aren't any extraneous moves here; he keeps things tightly constrained, holding down the bubbling emotions the story keeps throwing out. The harder he pushes them back, the more powerful they become. Cinema is itself a kind of enchantment. Come and witness its re-'Birth'. Tom Charity 
More information about Birth » Critics' Reviews
Radio Times
A ten-year-old boy claims to be the reincarnation of a woman's dead husband in Sexy Beast director Jonathan Glazer's utterly captivating New York-set fairy tale. Scripted by Glazer, Milo Addica and Jean-Claude Carriére (Luis Buñuel's preferred collaborator), this gripping film considers the overriding power of love and how the strength of belief can lead individuals into moral minefields. Nicole Kidman astonishes anew with a performance of haunting intensity as the about-to-be-remarried widow whose life is turned upside down by Cameron Bright's intrusive pre-pubescent, who we first see crashing a party at her apartment and demanding that she call off the wedding. This elegantly shot and sophisticated curiosity relies heavily on close-ups, uses minimal dialogue and is scored to perfection (by Alexandre Desplat). Intriguingly ambiguous, thanks to its unusual slant as a paranormal thriller that is anything but (even its delicate resolution is firmly rooted in the surprisingly mundane), this stark and elusive spellbinder is a truly unique experience. GQ Powerful, stirring and thought provoking The Guardian Sleek and intelligent Members' ReviewsReviews Voted Most HelpfulMost Recent Reviews |
As an audience, we're with
Kidman's Anna every step of the way. Rationally, we know he cannot be what he claims. Yet we're forced to
readjust our assumptions. Not because of the titbits he seems to know about Anna and her upper-class Manhattan
family, but because of the sheer depth of his ardour. That's what convinces Anna too.
Not so long ago I wrote an editorial suggesting that we had seen the best of
Nicole Kidman... I may have to eat my words here. Like her finest directors (I mean
Kubrick,
Van Sant,
von Trier)
Jonathan Glazer has cast
Kidman in a role which taps into her public persona; in this case, two overlapping, or paradoxical images:
Kidman as the devoted but jilted wife, and
Kidman as the contracted wife in a sham marriage.
Even a more overtly dramatic tour-de-force, when Joseph freaks out and physically attacks Sean (we think
to kill him, although it ends in a spanking) wouldn't have the same savage force if it hadn't begun with the
surreal sight of a trio of classical musicians rehearsing 'Here Comes the Bride' in a luxurious West Side drawing
room.