The artfulness of this film directed by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) is evident in the opening sequence when a hooded man is running in the snow-covered lanes of Central Park in Manhattan. The mixture of light-heartedness and ominous percussive sounds in the music by Alexandre Desplat offers a perfect accompaniment to his journey which ends underneath an underpass where he collapses and dies. The next image is that of a child being born, and then we move to ten years later.
Anna (Nicole Kidman), the jogger's widow, is holding a party in the elegant Upper East Side apartment of her wealthy mother, Eleanor (Lauren Bacall), where Joseph (Danny Houston) proudly announces to the guests that he and Anna will shortly be married. Later, Sean (Cameron Bright), a ten-year-old boy, walks in unannounced to Eleanor's family birthday party. He asks to speak privately to Anna and in the kitchen, this stranger tells her that he is the reincarnation of her dead husband Sean and that she should not marry Joseph.
Anna is stunned by this news, convinced it is nothing more than a sick joke. But then she learns that Sean lives in the building with his father (Ted Levine), a tutor, and his mother (Cara Seymour), who are shocked to learn of his statements to their neighbor. His mother is taken aback when Sean tells her that he is no longer her son. Anna's brother-in-law Bob (Arliss Howard) tapes an interview with Sean and learns some intimate details that only Anna's husband could have known. When the boy summons Anna to meet him in Central Park in a spot that only she knows, they rendezvous at the underpass where Sean died.
This film toys with the idea of reincarnation and the ties that link us to the past. It is interesting to watch these secular New Yorkers respond to the idea with varying degrees of disbelief, scorn, and anger. There is no place in their rational lives for mystery, and they are quick to find avenues of escape from the uncomfortable presence of the strange boy who holds so intensely to his declaration of love for Anna. In one of the film's most poignant moments, the camera focuses on Anna's face as she attends a concert. A series of emotions flicker across her visage, and we realize that she has fallen under the spell of the boy and will not be dissuaded. Joseph does not help his own cause by eventually exploding in a violent attack on Sean.
Birth begins as a tale about reincarnation but ends as a sobering examination about the fierce hold that grief can have on people who refuse to give up their loyalty or attachment to those they have loved passionately.
