Nicole Kidman Tribute: Birth (2004)

by Cláudio Alves

After her Oscar win for The Hours, Nicole Kidman's career went through some interesting somersaults. 2003 saw her bow the avant-garde cruelty of Dogville at Cannes, while Hollywood bore witness to two prestige projects whose success is debatable. The Human Stain is one of those classic "This Had Oscar Buzz" case studies, while Cold Mountain is most interesting for how it didn't secure a Best Actress nomination despite AMPAS' affection. Then came 2004, when von Trier's Brechtian film finally reached the States, and Kidman faced critical lashings as a response to her risk-taking. If not for Dogville, then for a derided broad comedy we'll discuss later in the series. And, of course, for today's subject – Birth.

Jonathan Glazer's sophomore feature was a resounding bomb with audiences and critics back in 2004, and only the Golden Globes seemed willing to recognize the genius in Nicole Kidman's work. Twenty years later, its reputation has changed…

There are as many ways to regard Birth as there are micro-expressions fleeting through Nicole Kidman's face in any given scene. Still, re-watching it for this Tribute, I was struck by the picture's properties as a work of horror. It's not necessarily a genre exercise going through Grand Guignol mechanisms and the like, but a Gothic sort of literate tradition harkening back to the works of Henry James and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, among others. After all, for many a character within its fold, and Kidman's Anna most of all, Birth is a ghost story where present life is intruded upon by the manifest past. The beyond violates a world of reason, its manifest impossibility tearing lives asunder. 

Kidman and her director flirt with terrifying ideas even as they present them in pale amber light, carvings of polished ebony and cold ivories. Moreover, they push into notions of the feminine grotesque, as one woman is driven to consider awful things, so willing to succumb to madness because it's sweeter than the reality of loss. Numerous close-ups are akin to horror images, with Anna either petrified by fear of what she cannot comprehend – and that mystery is often her own emotions – or petrifying in the surrender to a dangerous belief. It's a desperate thing, deeply upsetting even as it fascinates the viewer with all its oscillations from fear to revulsion, hope and self-delusion.

In conversation with a friend – fellow TFE writer and Kidman aficionado Nick Taylor – the ghost of Deborah Kerr's unstable governess in The Innocents came about. There are instances when a child's hands cradle the grown woman's visage or when she claws tightly at the boy that feel like echoes from that cinematic horror. But I also propose a comparison to Ingrid Bergman's Oscar-winning turn in Gaslight, a drama that, in itself, problematizes the tenets of Gothic horror. For one woman's fragile psyche, much of that film is a corrosive haunting. But then, the end comes and punctures the spiritism with reason. The true horror becomes what the supernatural falsity reveals about the players.

Not to belabor the point, but Birth is a phantasmagoria in such models, or at least, it can be. For years, I analyzed it more as a vivisected melodrama of widowhood, drained of blood and soaked in formaldehyde, left floating in ether with the light glistening across its smooth surfaces. That quality is still there, especially in Harris Savides' wintery lensing, but the terrors of the soul have surpassed the melodrama when it comes to Kidman's Anna. She may not be a scream queen, but she longs to scream. Though, perhaps, that's a note for the end of this analysis. There's much to consider before the bridal coda and her Munch-like wail without sound.

We hear of Anna before we see her. In the dark embrace of a black screen, a man's voice hypothesizes one's willingness to believe the impossible. While he does not believe in reincarnation, if his wife were to die and, the next day, a bird spoke to him in her voice, claiming to be Anna, he'd be hard-pressed to doubt it. We'll never hear from this Sean again, for, in his run through a snowbound Central Park, the man dies alone in the dark. Ten years later, we see the eponymous wife, now a widow, for the first time. She's at the cemetery before Sean's grave. Maybe she's confiding something in him or asking permission.

As she turns to leave, a hand lingers in the stone. Even as she moves to leave, part of her trails behind, holding on to what's out of reach. Considering this is the day when Anna and Joseph announce their engagement, the visit seems like the closing of a chapter, mayhap the whole first volume of the woman's romantic life. But the book remains open, as we'll soon find out. At the party, she's a gamine beauty, brown hair styled in a Rosemary's Baby-esque pixie cut and figure sheathed in black. It's a night of celebration, but these high society circles are drawn to an idea of chic that's not too different from funeral dress codes.

It's an engagement party, yet it looks like a wake. Only the smiles differ, Anna's most of all, so superficially happy. But strike the bell of her joy and the sound won't tinkle. It'll be muffled and hollow. Hers is that graceful politeness that comes automatically to those who've lived their whole existence in environments where wealth is a given, and the elegance of a disaffected demeanor is to be expected. Welcoming Sean's brother into the party, the fragility of these surfaces becomes apparent, though they do not break. Kidman has been lit to look as if she were sculpted in marble, but the truth of Anna is closer to a porcelain so thin that a whisper could crack it.

Nothing is overplayed, however, as we'll see when the couple sets their wedding date with the family during a birthday soirée for Anna's mother. It's then that Sean comes into the scene. Not the adult man we saw die in the picture's prologue. Instead, it's a ten-year-old stranger with the same name. He asks to talk to Anna alone, prompting an embarrassed confusion out of her, some attempt at cross-armed authority that reads like a gesture of self-protection, mayhap self-soothing. Talking to the kid, she's all smiles and soft-spoken condescension, handling it like some bizarre boyish folly until he claims to be Sean – not a boy with a crush but the man returning from the dead telling his wife not to remarry.

Here, Glazer first exploits the power of a Kidman close-up, stressing the flicker of a jaw muscle as her smile goes from effortless to strained. The next few scenes are an exercise in slow-moving collapse. Anna's initial reaction is instinctual upset, rejecting the boy's claim with a not-too-gentle shove out the door and a few smiles almost mocking with their projected disbelief. But the camera lingers, and the cutting prowess of Sam Sneade and Claus Wehlisch is keen on capturing the swiftly changing realities of Anna's reaction. For example, going back to the apartment after getting rid of him, one glimpses introspection.

And then, confiding to her pregnant sister, it's all played as a hilarious joke if not for the animal panic Kidman brings to a glassy, wide-eyed gaze. Next comes a letter, and the situation becomes a topic of discussion for the whole family. Kidman plays Anna as a performer of unpersuasive unflappability, trying to convey she thinks it's all absurd while we know it may not be so simple. Starting the scene with the actress biting her nails calls attention to the effort of her casualness and marks the start of a peculiar leitmotiv of Anna's body language. In poses like this, there's an adolescent insecurity at play, a return to youthful petulance, and other notions unbecoming of a grown woman.

It's especially interesting to consider how stilted Anna looks when she next confronts Sean. Her posture reads, again, like a constructed projection of adult authority. She's not fooling anyone, though. Costumed in a dress that makes her look naked in wide shot, her face is further carved by makeup that accentuates the feline angle of her eyes, high cheekbones and a mouth glistening with the possibility of open awe. Glazer's camera and Kidman's face are a match made in heaven, both in the confrontational close-up that precedes the opera scene and that famous three-minute passage. I've written before about the actress' miraculous work as an inward movement of performed spectatorship so that I won't linger.

Let's just say that this big swing in Glazer's part would never have worked without an actress who could sustain it. On the other hand, consider a later examination of Kidman's face when Anna meets Sean at the park. More specifically, at the place where her husband died. In the woman's eyes, we recognize a horrifying realization. It's not that she's starting to believe, but she desperately wants to believe. Is she aware of the wild need that burns inside? Of course not. If there's one thing Kidman makes clear about Anna is how much she doesn't know herself, holding on to an unexamined life as her only chance at surviving through this. 

Then again, one never senses that this is a new state of affairs for Anna. She's always been like this, and the present mess is no necessary change of pace. Like many of us, she's comfortable in the mystery of her own heart – ignorance is bliss when self-knowledge is as lethal as battery acid down the throat. Yet, is Anna a mystery to those around her? Visiting Sean's brother to divulge what's been happening with the boy, Kidman unravels in real time. The staging is simple to the point it puts the onus of its lunatic statements on the actors, the leading lady most of all, asking them to make the unreasonable work.

She delivers, going from emotion to emotion, in a show-stopping feat of plasticity, both expressive and tonal. There's a universe of meaning in the connections and disconnections between Anna's face and her words. Anger, shame, incredulity melting into willful naivete, a touch of euphoria tamped down by fear, and back again. Her "date" with Sean is another string of perverse imaginings that ask the world of Kidman, who must negotiate the insanity overtaking Anna as she indulges the boy. Sure, she keeps trying to dissuade him with words, but behavioral cues tell a different, much more troubling story.

Like her husband's brother could see the genuine instability at play, so does Joseph, who grows jealous of the little menace, and so does the audience. The widow is in emotional freefall, and Kidman is there with her, conveying the sotto voce madness of Anna's ghost opera. Cloistered in shadow, smiling up at her dead husband's brother with a terrible plea, she is a woman lost. She's almost frightening. But who are we frightened for? Perchance for little Sean who's in way over his head. Or for those who love Anna and are now trapped in this nightmare. In the most basic sense, we're frightened for her, who seems ready to disintegrate.

When it's time for the truth to emerge, she almost does. Confronted by the unmasking of more than one lie, caught again with the boy naked in her bathtub, Anna is furious – at him and probably at herself – but more than that, she's forced to relinquish another beautiful future with her beloved and re-accept the reality of his absence. Willing herself to the abyss, she's pulled back by betrayal and left with nothing but emptiness. It's a bucket of freezing cold water over a feverish brow, a shock out of mania that ends with Anna prostrated at Joseph's feet. She humiliates herself for forgiveness, denying her will and agency in everything that happened. Somehow, Kidman makes it more heartbreaking than Sean's deception.

Birth ends on a May wedding, the merry month looking bleaker than ever, even as all the décor and dress point toward a joyous occasion. The cold light suggests the truth growing cancerous in Anna's heart, the hollowness of this charade made clear for all to see. At this moment, she finally seems to know herself, and it's the most horrible thing that could have happened to her. Kidman embodies the horror and the anguish, her screams muted by Alexander Desplat's score as Anna falls apart at the ocean's edge. To end this ghost story, director and actress make their character into a specter paralyzed by the knowledge of their lifelessness.

Previously in the Nicole Kidman TFE Tribute: 

• Introductiom (1983-1989) - Early Australian films
• Billy Bathgate (1991) – her first Golden Globe nomination!
• Malice (1993) - when Kidman met Sorkin
• To Die For (1995) - her first Golden Globe win!
• The Portrait of a Lady (1996) - a Campion experiment
• Practical Magic (1998)  - comfort food cinema
• Eyes Wide Shut (1999)- Kubrick. Cruise. Kidman.
• Moulin Rouge! (2001) - her first Oscar nomination!
• The Others (2001) - a foray into horror
• The Hours (2002) - the Oscar victory!
• Dogville (2003) - Lars von Trier's masterpiece

After Nicole Kidman's best performance, we shall cool our spirits with a glamorous miniature. Tomorrow, it's time to smell the sweetness of a forbidden love story in Chanel Nº 5: The Film.

Comments

[bvrs90]

This is probably Kidman's best performance (and Desplat's best score, if I may add).

[Olesh]

I remember loving this intricate performance and should have been nominated that year. The opera scene is just fuckin' spectacular!

But still..

1. Imelda Staunton in Vera Drake (towering performance both male/female; should've swept that year, so quiet and sublime)

2. Kate Winslet in ESOTSM (magnificent and kate's best performance ever)

3. Julie Delpy in Before Sunset (every scene with Ethan, what great chemistry, soulful in its character)

4. Nicole Kidman in Birth (everything about it)

5. Catalina Sandino in MFOG (star making performance)

[thevoid99]

This is an underrated film and certainly a film that I hope to re-watch as Nicole is great in this though I still have some mixed thoughts on Cameron Bright as the kid in the film as he's never really been a good actor.

[davidandwaffles]

A truly great movie. It seemed like the sort of film and performance some of the critics groups would have at least gone for, but no. Still polarizing, but I'm glad the Kidmaniacs have tipped the scale.
Also, Anne Heche is marvelous in it. I absolutely would have nominated her as well.
Now that I think about it, there's an interesting, very different, but equally intense, alternate version with her in the lead!

[Mr Ripley79]

It's almost 20 years since i've seen it and all I can remember is that close up,the "You're a little liar" scene and Nicoles Rosemary's Baby styled wig.

Claudio he writing is sometimes a bit academic for me but I do like reading even if I don't get everything that's been written

As good as Kidman is Imelda Staunton deserved that year's Oscar and if not her Kate.

[DK]

If Nicole hadn't won her Oscar for The Hours, how frustrating and exasperating would the last two decades have been trying to get her one?

I'm not bothered in the slightest that she didn't get recognized for Dogville, Birth, etc. etc. etc. because she's Academy Award Winner Nicole Kidman either way. Tilda Swinton's in the same boat. It's liberating when you get the prize and go back to doing whatever the hell you want. They've just stacked up a ton of great performances and focused on the work.

Plenty of really gifted actresses get stuck on the Oscar Bait hamster wheel trying to solve their awards problem but Nicole was spared that.

[thevoid99]

Kidmaniacs... Mate! Whatcha gonna do Mate when Kidster and Watts run wild on you mate?!!!!!

[Drew]

This for me is Nicole's best performance and this movie is gorgeous to look at; cannot believe Harris Savides didn't get nominated for this.
Reading the piece that came out during Nicole's AFI tribute, it's amazing how during production, the script was kept being revised and Nicole had to shoot some scenes based on revised script the night before. Reading that Nicole really support Glazer's process under the studio scrutiny speaks highly of Nicole's commitment is to director's vision.
Hopefully Criterion will release a blu ray or 4K blu ray of this underrated movie.

[Mark Brinkerhoff]

I, too, believe that Birth is her finest performance, one she is unlikely to top in her (illustrious) career. And what a career! Kidman is as haunting as she is subtly amazing here; same with Heche, around whose side story I’d watch a whole damn movie.

I was fortunate to see Birth, in all its glory, in a completely empty theater in the fall of 2004 with my then-boyfriend, who *didn’t* care for it—at all. But I was mesmerized, by Savides’ cinematography, Glazer’s direction, Desplat’s score, and Kidman’s superlative, all of which hold up to this day. *chef’s kiss*