Reencarnación

'Birth' has a mixed to negative critical reaction, although Roger Ebert and Slant Magazine thought very highly of it, and the audience reaction is also very much polarising. Some love or appreciate 'Birth', others disliked it or were perplexed by it.

Seeing 'Birth', count me in as somebody who has high appreciation for it, despite not completely loving it and acknowledging that it has flaws. It is Jonathan Glazer's least accessible and most divisive film ('Under the Skin' is also polarising but was criminally acclaimed, unlike 'Birth') and is not his best film (that's his most accessible film 'Sexy Beast'), but it's his most underrated to me. Not as good as 'Sexy Beast' but despite the much lower rating there is a marginal preference to it than 'Under the Skin', which was still a good film.

The film is not perfect by all means. Its weak point is the ending, although it is heart-breaking and delicate it also leaves too many questions unanswered, too ambiguous and feels abrupt. More could have been done with Anne Heche's role, which was a little underdeveloped, Anne Heche admittedly does a great job. The dialogue is minimal, a good choice, but when it appears it's a little corny.

Didn't actually think at all that the film meanders in pacing, it is deliberate but essential to the story's atmosphere and adds a good deal. Was too transfixed by how well the film was made and acted to find it dull. Nor did Cameron Bright come over as wooden or without personality, it's a subtle but chillingly effective.

If one has to pick three particularly great things, it's the production values, the music score and Nicole Kidman. 'Birth' is exceptionally well made, although with heavy reliance on close ups it's very elegantly shot and sumptuously produced and designed. The acclaimed close up of Kidman's face at the opera is especially striking.

Alexandre Desplat's music score is one that fits perfectly in the film and is perfection of a score on its own. It's haunting, ominous understated and truly beautiful, one also that one can listen to over and over.

Kidman's performance here is astonishing and among her best. There is a huge amount of haunting intensity and heart-wrenching nuance. It's not just her in the cast who makes an impression. Bright and Heche do great jobs, Danny Huston gives a performance of intensity and vulnerability and Lauren Bacall is electrifying.

Regarding highlight scenes, the highlights are the opera, beach and Heche's confrontation scene. The controversial bathtub scene may seem unintentionally creepy at first and has been criticised for being perverted, but when reading into the defence of that scene it's a scene not deserving of the controversy and nowhere near as erotic or exploitative as it appeared on screen.

Story-wise, it's unusual but haunting and moving, with the questions it raises being dealt with sophistication, intrigue and sensitivity. The characters intrigue too.

Overall, very good film, polarising but to me under-appreciated. 8/10 Bethany Cox

(Disclaimer) If you like popcorn flicks, and are incapable of thinking during a movie, Birth is not for you, go see The Grudge instead. It may be more your speed.

Birth is a film for the thinker, the moviegoer that doesn't automatically shut down in the theater. This movie had me constantly trying to sort things out all the way through to the end.

I have read a few of the reviews on here and some of you might not be into the whole film-making process. Those that really study film and cinematography; will be treated to a 100 minutes of pure beauty in film-making. I loved how he transitioned between one shot and the next. The one scene that I found surprisingly effective is when he focused on Kidman's face for 3 minutes straight. He chose to use her silent acting abilities as a method to describe her consideration of this strange child. I am a lover of all forms of film, and I'm constantly on the lookout for the next film that gets my mind going. The last film to do that was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Before that, it was Vanilla sky. Both of these films have been less than favored by the mass public. Its strictly because they DO cause you to think beyond "when is the hero going to prevail"

Birth (2004)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Ten years after the death of her husband, a woman (Nicole Kidman) is about to remarry but she gets a visit from a 10-year-old boy (Cameron Bright) who claims to be her husband reincarnated. This is certainly a very strange, bizarre yet unique love story/thriller that asks a lot of deep questions but sadly none are really answered due to the lackluster ending. The first hour is certainly hard hitting stuff with some eerie atmosphere that goes a long way. Nicole Kidman turns in another brilliant and incredibly brave performance, which should have gotten more attention but I guess it was overlooked due to the controversy surrounding a couple scenes including the one with her and the kid in the bathtub together. What I enjoyed best was that the film played out as something from real life and not B.S. we see in a movie. The characters are all very mature, they think and act the way people do in life and not in some normal movie. Danny Huston and Lauren Bacall co-star. Anne Heche is also very good in a role I didn't even know it was her at first.

There's a scene in this that will feature in film school classes for a long time to come.

Nichole is an uneven actress, only sometimes rising to the world class of Kate and Cate and the old Julianne. The smallest part of this is the process of inhabiting a character, rare enough as it is.

A film exists on several layers depending on its architecture. (I'm only talking here about films that live.) Almost never are the higher levels accessible to the actors in the project: few actors even know they exist. This film is a great example of an actress knowing and inhabiting those higher levels.

What we have here is a director who spins a space of awareness around what we see. The story specifically addresses this and supports it. Into this space, the director and composer have poured a score. This score fits that space as being within the movie proper instead of being an annotation as the usual case.

In this space, the score is something between the film and us the audience, the space where the waystations for reincarnation take place (at least in the story). Nichole acts to the score. It is a remarkable feat because as with green screen acting one has to anticipate what is to come into being later.

The first scene introduces us to that space the score creates. It is a very long shot of the adult Sean running, dying and entering the fog of the score. The scene I mentioned above is later, when Nichole knows she is entering that space: she has literally just sat down to watch an opera... the music comes up from the movie/opera/limbo space we have already entered and it washes over her and changes her reality.

This shot isn't just of a character, but of an actress, her character, and a dialog among them and us about the reality of this space, this layer of the film.

Later, she is getting married and the music (this time by players on screen) draw many of the watchers in as well.

There are lots of flaws in this; it isn't a lifealtering experience. But that one thing is a special experience, the idea that the filmmaker spins an extra space which Sean infers and Nichole, the composer and we inhabit.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

I can understand why people react so aversely to this film, but, in Birth's defence, it's quite a demanding a piece for it to suit everyone's tastes.

Granted, the plot is slightly unpalatable, and yes, there are instances when the film appears to veer into senslessness, but, unless you want a clear-cut resolution, this cannot quite be written off as shoddy work on the part of anyone involved. Most of the complaints made about Birth have come from people who cannot get past the plot elements of the film, namely, the flirtation with pedophilia. It is uncomfortable, quite so, but that precisely is the point... Moreover, it's worth noting that the characters themselves find it repelling, and that there is nary a sexual undercurrent between Sean and Anna.

I believe one could argue, very strongly, that this plot device is merely a catalyst to throw Anna's psyche into relief. In the end, whether the boy is Sean or not proves irrelevant; the film is less about a bizarre happening than about the extreme psychological test it brings about. It's intense analysis of love, grief, need and the leaps of faith...

Given this set-up, the execution is flawless. What the screenplay does, quite beautifully, is convey silent emotions; it understands, better than most films, that communication is often non-verbal, and in this situation, when the very thing at stake is reason, it is logical that the characters would be at a loss for words. If any given person were to be in Anna's situation...what would they do? How would you react if someone close to you were living through this?

Jonathan Glazer's direction is splendid, building up a somber, airless mood and coaxing superlative performances out of the entire cast. Kidman's performance is somewhat mannered, yet she completely, effortlessly inhabits a difficult role; it is a brave, piercing, bravura performance. She captures Anna's desperation and fragility, but also her privileged lifestyle and upbringing, and the mad undercurrents grief has brought about. The so-called opera scene will be, years from now, considered a seminal moment in her career. Bright is chillingly effective, registering an intensity that is somewhat unsettling, and the supporting turns--which, with limited material flesh out characters, build histories and express emotions that the screenplay only implies--are sterling, especially in the case of Bacall and Howard.

Technically, the film is a marvel. Two things are worth noting: Harris Savides' wonderful cinematography (there are at least three iconic sequences in the film), which creates a look and a mood that is at once foreboding and exquisitely beautiful, and Alexandre Desplat's splendid score, which underscores the drama without becoming obtrusive and blends symphonic melodies with a hi-lo undercurrent that creates an odd womb-like effect.

Lovely, heartbreaking, unforgettable.