Birth (2004) Director Jonathan Glazer’s drama film titled Birth is a story set with the undertones of possible reincarnation, love, loss, and grief.
The movie gives us a glimpse into the life of a widowed woman who is convinced that her dead husband is back in a different form. Continue reading till the end if you wish to know more about this drama film, Birth’s Ending.
The movie was written by Milo Addica, Jean-Claude Carriere, and Jonathan Glazer together and starred talented actress Nicole Kidman, who played the role of the leading character named, Anna, Cameron Bright in the role of younger Sean, and Michael Desautels as the grown-up version of Sean.
While these three are the story’s main characters, the producers also cast Danny Huston, Lauren Bacall, Alison Elliot, Anne Heche, Ted Levine, and many others to be a part of the movie.
The director of the film, Jonathan Glazer, revealed he had wanted to make an emotional piece that told the story of a love so deep that the lead ends up finding mysterious ways to express it.
The movie did not receive positive reactions from critics and fans when it debuted at the Venice Film Festival. People failed to give the film completely negative reviews, calling it strange, corny, lazy, eccentric, unforgettable, oddly intriguing, and a freshly mounted production.
Glazer took the mixed response from the audience positively, saying that was exactly what he was aiming for. The movie gives one a quick thrill, is chilly, and, at times, even feels somewhat paranormal, but the ending seems to fail at keeping up with all of these traits, leaving many wondering if the makers chose the lazy way out for the end.
Birth (2004) Ending Explained
The movie opens with a young couple living together in New York City, indefinitely in love with each other, named Anna and Sean. While we warm up to the film and its characters, our narrator, Sean, tells us all about how he does not believe in reincarnation.
Throughout this narration, we get a glimpse into the city where the couple probably had spent some of the best time of their life together. Scenes of Central Park flash on our screen only to finally introduce us to our narrator, Sean, who we realize was not talking to us, but was giving a lecture to an audience we don’t get to see.
Once the lecture ends, science guy Sean decides to jog, which is where he meets his end because of a heart attack. We don’t get to see or meet Sean as an individual, so we take time to understand his importance. After our first character’s arc ended just like that, we time travel ten years later, where we meet our next lead, Anna.
It is years after Sean’s passing, and Anna has finally decided to move on, or at least pretend to, by agreeing to marry her new boyfriend, Joseph. There’s a party to celebrate it all, but everybody in the room can sense that this marriage is not fixing things for Anna, that she is still broken and unhappy.
It is at this party that a young boy gets his eyes stuck on Anna and continues to eye her through the night. At another party, this time for Anna’s mother, the young boy ensures he gets to talk to Anna.
As Anna goes to meet the person who had been desperately looking for her, she finds the child waiting for her, and what he says next triggers our main plotline.
The Reincarnation Plot
This young child, also named Sean, outright claims that he is Anna’s husband, a reincarnation of him, and urges her not to marry Joseph. While Anna, who is already in a vulnerable state, is shocked, she holds on to the facts and dismisses the boys’ claims.
Young Sean continues his pursuit and sends Anna a letter, once again, mentioning that he is her dead husband’s reincarnation and begging her not to marry Joseph. Anna finally talks about the boy to Joseph, and the latter tries to get more information on him to get to the bottom of the matter.
Her entire family gathers around young Sean in an attempt to confront him and his claims, but the boys refuse to speak up, which does not really work well for him. While everybody in the family seems to be skeptical about the boy, Anna looks like she wants to hear more.
She runs out to meet the young boy, and they meet up at Central Park, at the same spot where adult Sean had died. Here, young Sean finally agrees to sit for questioning, and Bob, Anna’s brother-in-law, also a doctor, begins the process.
While we expected his bluff to be caught, the boy gives out extremely private details about Anna and Sean’s relationship, including stuff about their sex life.
He also had an understanding of their apartment, which only convinced Anna more of the fact that the boy might be speaking the truth. The family remained cautious, but Anna was fully convinced.
Desperate to be with her husband in some form, Anna continues to spend more time with Sean, which is disturbing for Joseph.
Oddly, he worries that Anna will leave him for the boy, pushing him to attack the boy out of jealousy. A controversial scene of the film finally turns up, when Sean runs out to get away from Joseph, and Anna follows him only to get kissed on the lips by the boy.
This scene and a few others in the movie had many questioning the direction and the thought behind the film. Still, the makers clarified that they did not mean for the movie to be erotic or sexual in any way, especially the relationship Anna and Sean shared.
The Truth Revealed
Over time, Anna gets more and more convinced of Sean’s reincarnation, and her family worries about her strange behavior. She asks Clara and Clifford, Sean’s brother and his wife, to meet the boy once to confirm her doubts.
Young Sean and Clara share a secret moment where Sean pulls out a bag of love letters that Anna had written to Sean. Turns out Clara was not a nice person at all and had wanted to give the bag of letters to Anna as a gift on her engagement as a torturous present.
Young Sean had read the letters, and the truth was finally out. We are told that Clara had been in love with Sean before his death, and she had always been jealous that Sean refused to leave Anna for her.
Sean had gotten the letters from Anna and had passed them on to Clara without opening them, and Clara had planned on bringing them back to Anna, but obviously, she backed out of the plan.
At this moment, Clara points out to young Sean that he is, in fact, adult Sean’s reincarnation; he would have recognized his true love, Clara, and would have come for her instead of running after Anna. Anna, fully believing that this boy is her dead husband’s reincarnation, runs to him and tells him they should run away.
While she is desperate enough to want to run away with a young boy and to want to marry him when he turns of age, Sean finally speaks up and refuses to indulge in her wishes, telling her that he is not the reincarnated Sean.
The Ending Explained
The movie ends with Joseph lingering around Anna and, eventually, the two getting married at a beach. Sean leaves her a letter telling her everything and apologizing for screwing with her vulnerable emotions and memories. He says sorry for thinking that he was the reincarnated Sean, and as Anna reads this, we find her standing by the ocean, looking lost in nothingness.
She is disappointed and going through the feelings of grief and sadness related to losing her husband a second time, and it is just as painful as the first time for her. Though she is in pain, she is married, and the movie ends with Joseph coming here to bring her back to the celebrations, whispering something inaudible to her right before the credits roll.
Anna’s character was struck with tragedy ten years ago, and she has not recovered from it. And when she makes a slight effort to bring herself together, things crumble as young Sean enters her life and shakes her resolve to move on.
She is hit with the same feelings of loss, grief, and depression twice, once during Sean’s death and a second time when young Sean refuses to run away with her and disappears from her life. While we can justify Anna’s actions as being done out of utter desperation, young Sean is confusing.
We figure that the boy might not be all that happy and loved, causing him to romanticize adult love and find strange ways to get it. The young boy knew so much about Anna because he had read the letters, so that clears the question, was he a reincarnation? No, he was not. He couldn’t have been because he was so different.
Sean was a man of science and had never been that in love with Anna or Clara. Clara was completely devoted to the man and hated Anna for not knowing her husband.
Young Sean runs away from Anna because he realizes that adult Sean never loved Anna that deeply, but he did, and their love was so different there was no way they were the same.
While adult Sean, a science person, was in love with someone else, young Sean had developed genuine affection for Anna, making him realize that he was so unlike Sean. This cruel realization forces him to push himself away from the woman, leaving her heartbroken again.
Feelings of desperation, despair, pain, and failed attempts at holding onto thin threads of hope are sprinkled throughout the movie. While the entire thing feels like it is leading up to something great, the actual ending does end up leaving you a little speechless because of how predictable it is.
