Birth Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)November 1st, 2004
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January is Frozen Food Month and February is Black History Month. But does anybody know what the heck October is? Apparently, at least when it comes to cinema, it's Woman In Her Late 30s Dealing With What Might Be The Reincarnation Of Her First And Best Lover Month. Dylan Kidd's p.s. first tackled the subject, and now Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) takes the reigns with Nicole Kidman (The Stepford Wives) replacing Laura Linney in Birth, a film that reminded me both of a still, quiet Kubrick chamber piece and Rosemary's Baby.
The Baby reference is due more to Birth's setting and casting than content. Kidman's Anna, like Mia Farrow's Rosemary, is frighteningly thin, has a pixie haircut and a tiny, timid voice, as well as a fancy Central Park apartment and a place in the upper crust of Manhattan's social elite. Anna' s husband, Sean, died ten years ago, but she's finally moved on enough to accept a marriage proposal from Joseph (Danny Huston, Silver City). Shortly after their lavish engagement party, Anna is confronted by a 10-year-old kid named Sean (Cameron Bright, Godsend) who claims to be her deceased husband.
Anna handles it like you'd expect: At first she's startled, then filled with indifferent anger, and then she has a good laugh about it because it's so damn cute. But as Little Sean begins to cough up important details about their relationship, Anna - like Rosemary - becomes more and more frazzled. This sets off a domino effect of insanity, poisoning just about everyone it touches. Anna is well on her way to cuckoo, with fiancé Joseph, Sean's mother (Cara Seymour) and the wife of Sean and Anna's best man (Anne Heche) following quickly behind her. Only Anna, however, is buying Little Sean's story, and that leads to a couple of scenes that will have Birth's less sophisticated viewers squirming in agony (it's acting, you boobs).
Birth, despite having a couple of fairly major flaws*, is still riveting to watch, from its Six Feet Under-ish opening (we know Big Sean is going to buy it, but how will it happen?) to its slightly unsatisfying finale. It's definitely the kind of movie you'll be talking about the rest of the day. The acting is terrific across the board, and Kidman has much more chemistry with Bright than she did with Anthony Hopkins in last year's The Human Stain. Alexandre Desplat (Girl With a Pearl Earring) contributes an outstanding fairytale score (again, reminiscent of Baby), and Glazer, along with Gus Van Sant's regular photographer Harris Savides, seems to have taken a huge leap from creating stylish music video-type films to intensely thought-provoking cinema.
* - I can't talk about 'em because it might ruin/spoil your fun
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