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BIRTH (2004)
Not as painful, but just as drawn out Ever have an ex- that just wouldn't let go, one of those assholes who keeps insisting on inserting him/herself into your life long after the hint should've been taken? No, neither have I, but it's not too tough to imagine how that would be a pain in the ass. Now, try to imagine that asshole is ten. This movie has such a weird premise that I alternately wondered how it could possibly succeed, and how it could possibly fail. You can tell, I'm of mixed feelings here. It does carry its weird-as-hell premise up through to the end with a straight-faced refusal to play it silly and even offers up an explanation that doesn't cheat and is actually sort of plausible (if we disregard the eat-your-cake-and-have-it-too ending), if far-fetched. On the other hand, it's slow as hell. It has one scene where it just close-ups on Nicole Kidman for like three minutes...you could pick worse faces to zoom in on, but after fifteen seconds or so, the point has been made. Kidman plays Anna, a thirtysomething Manhattan widow who has finally said yes again after a marathon courtship to Danny Huston (his description of it suggests a lot about the relationship). She's having a nice dinner with family when a strange ten-year-old boy (Cameron Bright) walks in and announces that he's her dead husband Sean. Indeed, the kid's name is Sean too, and it's not like he came out of nowhere - he has parents, he goes to school...it's just that of late he said to his mom "I'm not your stupid son anymore". He can rattle off a lot of facts about Dead Sean and his relationship with Anna, but does not demonstrate the perceptiveness of an adult, and he's so sullen that if Dead Sean was anything like him, you'd wonder why she married him. We learn almost nothing about Dead Sean first-hand, except that he jogged, and delivered a lecture where he suggests he's not a believer in hippie mumbo jumbo like, say, coming back from death as a ten-year-old boy. And if they're the same person, than he's kind of being a dink now, isn't he? Wouldn't the grown-up (!) thing to do be to take the hint, accept that a marital relationship with a grown woman isn't going to work, and grab the second chance at life? Instead he's dragging the woman he loves through the emotional muck, all to slake his jealousy and possessiveness. Even though she asks the right questions about the possibilities (or lack thereof) in a romance between them, Anna doesn't really figure out that whether Boy Sean is really Dead Sean or not, it's not gonna work. She makes some pretty far-out concessions to the possibilities, and I don't know if that's because she desperately wants Dead Sean back, or if it's just because she wants out of her present engagement, or what. She seems like she's got a good head on her shoulders for the most part, so I had a tough time accepting how much she was willing to accept this after a while. Birth is Polanski worship to the core, and it's a little more skilfully handled than that in The Astronaut's Wife (the score by Alexandre Desplat is beautiful) but it still evokes more than anything else an unpleasant mix of discomfort and giggly disbelief. You can imagine how this movie would've been impossible with the genders reversed, though I'm sure it would've stuck in a lot more heads. This was a borderline case where I almost recommended it, but the ending tried to have it both ways and pissed me off. (c) Brian J. Wright 2005 BACK TO THE B's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |