Birth

[Ginger]

I just saw this on DVD, and have an argument going with some people about what it meant. My friends think (SPOILER) the kid really was Anna's husband, but he doesn't want her to find out about his affair with Anne Heche, so he just goes away in order to protect her. My take: The kid was just a kid who saw Anna around her apartment building and got a little obsessed with her. He was hanging around the apartment the night of the engagement party and followed Anne Heche to where she buried Anna's love letters. He dug them up, opened them, and read them. Being disturbed, the kid took what he read and convinced himself he was Sean. That's how he knew all of the personal details about their relationship and who the people were. When Anne Heche confronts him, he doesn't know her because the affair was not mentioned in Anna's love letters. He realizes he's not Sean and goes away. So he's not actually Anna's husband...except, maybe he is. He developed this obsession with Anna after seeing her, and he had a "deja vu" experience at the place where Sean died. They do have a connection, so it's a little ambiguous
The movie was slow as hell, but I wound up liking it.

[Deleted]

I liked this movie. It was full of tension and pretty awesome in that there wasn't a clear reason why the kid did what he did. Was he Sean or just cracked?

My take (it has been a while, so I hope I haven't fudged too many details) - The kid was Sean or at least part of Sean. At the beginning of the movie, the shots of Sean's death and a baby's birth lead me to believe that the story dealt with reincarnation in some way. However, the kid wasn't supposed to know he was Sean. Like, he wasn't supposed to find the letters and see Anna and disrupt her life. He was supposed to grow up "normally". I think seeing her triggered something in him that the letters confirmed. In any case, I didn't think the kid was simply crazy. I thought there was much more going on. That is part of the reason the movie worked for me. It wasn't just - yes, he is Sean or no, he is just nuts. You really don't know at the end. Either does Anna and it is just killing her. I LOVED that it turned out that the real Sean was sort of a jerk. The devotion of the kid made me question the reality of Sean's relationship with Anne Heche - like maybe he didn't really love her but didn't want Anna to find out about their affair so he gave her the letters to keep her quiet. The movie is really much more than it seems.

[chiqui]

Looking at it from a non-Western (Buddhist) persepective, reincarnation does exist and one of its tenets is the carrying forward of karma, the idea that in your next life you correct the failings of the previous one, and indeed all the old ones, if you can. By such you eventually spiritually mature and become a bodhisattva. However, because in Buddhism the soul has many layers, only the higher layers are carried forward, so the soul can never remember completely all that happened in its old lives (except when it is dead again), because they are considered lower parts of the consciousness. So what happens is a soul attempts to attone and grow while it lives again, but never realizes exactly why it does so... unless it has some flash of insight as what happened with the kid.

That's one of the reasons I left Buddhism by the way. It's kind of frustrating to be always attoning for things you can't remember.

[Deleted]

I quite liked this film, but then I tend to like 'pretentious' films now and then(I love von Trier films for example). Anyway, here's my take on the film.

Birth is not a film about reincarnation. I believe reincarnation is merely a tool used by the director to delve into the greater themes of love, grief, illusion and reality. Like Anna, we can never be completely sure of whether Sean was the real Sean, and consequently we are constantly questioning the line between fantasy and reality. Personally, I believe that the little Sean was not the reincarnation of big Sean. He was simply a boy who, like many little children, uses fantasy as a means of escape. But in his case, fantasy turned into obsession.

In the beginning, the idea that her husband could be reincarnated sounds completely ridiculous to Anna. But as she is forced to confront the memories of her dead husband her repressed love and emotions are reawakened. Ultimately she wants to believe the little boy, even though it defies all logic. Like the boy, she has retreated to fantasy, escaping the harsh reality that perhaps her husband never really loved her. I believe it is this realization, the idea that perhaps she has been living under the illusion that she’d experienced true love that breaks her in the end during the harrowing beach scene.

Anyway, to really analyze this film would require pages and pages of writing, so I’ll leave at that.

[Deleted]

thursdaynext said:

The kid was Sean or at least part of Sean. At the beginning of the movie, the shots of Sean's death and a baby's birth lead me to believe that the story dealt with reincarnation in some way. However, the kid wasn't supposed to know he was Sean. Like, he wasn't supposed to find the letters and see Anna and disrupt her life. He was supposed to grow up "normally". I think seeing her triggered something in him that the letters confirmed. In any case, I didn't think the kid was simply crazy. I thought there was much more going on. That is part of the reason the movie worked for me. It wasn't just - yes, he is Sean or no, he is just nuts. You really don't know at the end. Either does Anna and it is just killing her. I LOVED that it turned out that the real Sean was sort of a jerk. The devotion of the kid made me question the reality of Sean's relationship with Anne Heche - like maybe he didn't really love her but didn't want Anna to find out about their affair so he gave her the letters to keep her quiet. The movie is really much more than it seems.

That's exactly what I thought too. You've said it so well.

I loved this movie. But the ads for it during it's release lead me to believe it was about an adult woman having sex with a young boy. This really freaked me out and I recall thinking what an idiot Kidman was for doing such a movie. But oh it is so much more than that! It was a pleasant surprise for me. Great movie I thought.

[MrsCatHead]

I especially disliked the loooooong closeup of Nicole Kidman's face at the opera (was it an opera? I've completely forgotten). I know what the director was *trying* to do but Nic's face was so meh and didn't register the emotions I think she was meant to and the scene just Did Not Work.

Oh yeah, and the soundtrack annoyed the shit outta me. It sounded like a muted cell phone kept going off.