I recently got sucked into this movie when I had no intention of watching it. (Isn’t it funny how some movies become all the more memorable for *surprising * you into enjoyment?) ANyway, I’ve heard some people say they thought the ending to *Birth * sucked or that the movie on the whole was boring (“Nothing happened!”, etc.) Did anyone else find the film as bewitching and haunting as I did?
Witness the fool just asking for a thunderous chorus of NOs. . .
I laughed through the entire thing. What a trainwreck!
Yes from me. I saw it in the theater and meant to see it again, but it didn’t happen. I’m not quite sure why people thought the ending sucked. It worked for me. Since it’s been so long since I’ve seen it I can’t speak in details, but I just wanted to let you know that someone else liked it too. Nicole Kidman was, as usual in the right movie, brilliant, and the little boy was perfect.
I didn’t think it was boring at all, but then, I like slow, languid films that don’t feel the need to rush everywhere, like Solaris, Northfork, Dersu Uzala, Wings of Desire. They’re a problem if I’m tired, but that’s not the movie’s fault.
I’ve been meaning to watch it.
Doesn’t she take a bath with a 10-year old boy?
Lucky bastard got PAID to do that.
Equipoise, thanks for the response. I came away feeling the resolution actually unfolded as logically as it could have (if “logically” is the right word to use with such a strange tale).
Any concrete answers would have killed the whole thing for me–the ambiguity of whether or not the kid actually was her husband or whether Anne Heche’s character was lying about the intensity of their affair is what made it.
The eerie, measured pace really worked for me as well. That kind of direction only adds to such a mysterious story.
Nicole Kidman *was * fabulous. Don’t know why I keep forgetting what an outstanding actress she is.
Zebra- yeah, but the scene isn’t remotely as “scandalous” as the hoopla over it at the time would have had you believe.
I found it silly, dull, and I didn’t quite get what was going on at the end. Did Nic’s character suddenly realize that the kid/hubby had been telling the truth all along, or what?
I thought the premise sounded extremely interesting, but I though the execution sucked. The way it was directed / edited, etc, made the film EXTREMELY boring, IMO.
It annoyed the crap out of me how the directer had one way to build tension: Let’s show a closeup of Nicole Kidman’s face…have her staring ahead while music plays…for 4 freaking minutes! My wife actually got up after staring at her face for too long, went to the bathroom, and they didn’t get off her face until my wife came back!
The whole thing was just too slowly paced. It seemed to me that they had a good idea for the film, but when they went to make it, they realized that they only had enough script / plot for a 40 minute movie, so the director had to do everything in his power to make it feature length. Seriously, you could make the entire film, without cutting a single piece of dialogue, with a running time under 60 minutes…I’m convinced!
There is one thing that really bothered me about the kid’s act:
How did he know the husband died under the bridge? He could learn all about his wife, his adultery, etc. from the letters he saw the mistress bury at the start of the film. Somehow I don’t see this kid going through microfiche at the local library looking for police reports about someone’s death years earlier. From the brief shots of his home & school life I don’t see him having access to such data in those places either.
So did I miss something obvious, or was this really a huge plot hole?
I don’t think you missed anything. That’s what made it so ambiguous. 
Personally, I came away feeling the kid was just who he’d always said he was. They threw in Anne Heche’s “revelation” that the husband was actually crazy about *her, *etc. to balance the more realistic arguement, i.e., that the kid was just a wacky kid. But she was obviously lying. It was just enough to throw the kid/guy into doubt and make it that much more heartbreaking when he abandoned Kidman.