The following is my entry in The “Love Goes On” Blogathon, being hosted at this blog from May 1-3, 2020 in honor of my late wife. Click on the above image, and read bloggers’ takes on movies about earthly romances that extend beyond death!
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For this blogathon, I was going to submit a straightforward entry about a romance movie. But then I came across this oddity from the filmography of Nicole Kidman.
Birth is the story of Anna (Nicole Kidman), a widow engaged to be re-married, who is accosted by a 10-year-old boy (Cameron Bright) claiming to be the reincarnation of her late husband Sean. Initially affronted by this kid’s claim, Anna eventually comes to believe him all too much.
Some reviews just write themselves, don’t you think?
Nevertheless, I’ll be happy to point out the obvious: No matter how you slice it, this premise involves some most unseemly matters. If Anna falls for this kid, it’s going to lead to the kind of subject matter that you’d never want to see in a mainstream movie, even if the MPAA let you.
I’m relieved to report that the movie doesn’t quite go that far. At the same time, it veers closely enough to the edge — what with a boy-woman bathtub scene, and later a frank discussion about how the kid would handle Anna’s “needs” — that by movie’s end, you feel like a slimed Ghostbuster.
And what of this kid, anyway? The movie explains his presence so lackadaisically, it’s as though the movie was trying to reach a rare demographic of 10-year-old boys who suddenly want to be married to Nicole Kidman.
And don’t even get me started on Anne Heche, whose part in the story is supposed to be mysterious at first. Even so, from the very start, you can tell that her character has an interest in young Sean that has gone seriously awry.
The supporting cast, including 80-and-still-fabulous Lauren Bacall (What would Bogie think of this?), all have the same shell-shocked looks on their faces, as though they signed on for the movie before reading the script.
So, would you like to know how technologically inept I am?
One weekend in Feb. 2019, my computer had an Internet connection, but I couldn’t get anything to come up on my computer screen. As is the way of all non-savvy computer nerds, I quickly deduced that the best way to get everything going again on my screen was to purge everything I could think of. By mistake, that included the user ID and password of my WordPress account.
When I tried to get back into my WordPress account, WordPress asked me for my user ID and password. I had forgotten my password long ago (I only use a few thousand of them), and the user ID was an email account that I had deleted long ago after it got hacked. WordPress informed me that, unless I could send them an email message from my user ID’s account, they would not be able to send me a new password, and therefore, I would be locked out of my own account.
And so it went. My access to four-and-a-half years of blogging and several hundred blog subscribers were suddenly locked behind bars. (I imagined hearing a loud “cha-ching!” from the TV series “Law & Order.”)
So I’ve decided to try and make lemonade out of my WordPress lemons. I am resuming my blogging career on this “sequel” blog.
Of course, I still have a “history” of previous blogging that I’d like to reference on occasion. So be forewarned that now, I will often hyperlink to my previous blog. For example, if I’m writing about Charlie Chaplin, and I want to reference a Chaplin movie review from my old blog, I will link to it like this. So please note that, obviously, if you go to that hyperlink, you will have to press the “Back” button on your computer keyboard in order to return to this “sequel” blog.
If, by chance, you know anyone who followed my previous blog but is not aware of my current situation, please let them know so that I can restore some of my old readership. And of course, please feel free to return to and reference my previous blog, whose URL is listed on the masthead of this blog.
Thank you for bearing with me through a quite troublesome situation.
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4 thoughts on “BIRTH (2004) – After-birth queasiness isn’t just for women anymore”
I haven’t seen this but I’ve already decided it will never replace the reincarnation movie I wrote about!
I love this movie. I love the fact it is cagey to a fault. Is he the reincarnation of late husband? Is it some kind of cruel hoax? Despite a few explanations here and there, the movie never gives you a concrete answer. There are really too many unexplained things. Anyhow, I thought Kidman and the kid were brilliant! Jonathan Glazer’s next film, the sci-fi movie Under the Skin, is equally strange and interesting.
I hadn’t heard of this film before, and it does sound like it could be a bit, er, uncomfortable in places. But I was relieved to hear it doesn’t push the envelope quite that far.
Thanks for hosting this blogathon. The entries are terrific.
MovieMovieBlogBlog II 
I haven’t seen this but I’ve already decided it will never replace the reincarnation movie I wrote about!
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I love this movie. I love the fact it is cagey to a fault. Is he the reincarnation of late husband? Is it some kind of cruel hoax? Despite a few explanations here and there, the movie never gives you a concrete answer. There are really too many unexplained things. Anyhow, I thought Kidman and the kid were brilliant! Jonathan Glazer’s next film, the sci-fi movie Under the Skin, is equally strange and interesting.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wow! Interesting take on the movie, to be sure.
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I hadn’t heard of this film before, and it does sound like it could be a bit, er, uncomfortable in places. But I was relieved to hear it doesn’t push the envelope quite that far.
Thanks for hosting this blogathon. The entries are terrific.
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