Life After Birth
by Howard
Schumann

In his book Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, Dr. Ian Stevenson asserts that children usually begin to talk about past-life memories between the ages of two and four but that these recollections gradually dwindle when the child is between four and seven years old. Such is not the case in Birth, a new film about reincarnation by Jonathan Glazer. In the film, ten-year old Sean (Cameron Bright) suddenly appears in the house of a wealthy widow, Anna (Nicole Kidman) and announces that he is the reincarnation of her husband, also named Sean, who died ten years ago.

As the film opens, a man jogs in the snow in Central Park in New York City accompanied by the haunting score of Alexandre Desplat. After reaching an underpass, he hesitates, then collapses and dies. The film then cuts to the image of a baby being born and shifts the timeline to ten years later. Anna and her fiancé, Joseph (Danny Houston), are holding a party in the elegant East Side apartment she shares with her mother Eleanor (Lauren Bacall), her sister Laura (Alison Elliot) and her husband Bob (Arliss Howard). After Anna's friends Clifford (Peter Stormare) and his wife Clara (Anne Heche) appear, Clara excuses herself to go into the park to bury the gift she had brought from Anna (a plot point that will have repercussions later). When she returns, a dour looking ten-year old boy follows her into the party. The boy calls Anna into an adjacent room and announces without emotion that he is the reincarnation of her deceased husband and tells her not to marry Joseph.

Anna at first dismisses young Sean as a prankster but has second thoughts when her brother-in-law tapes an interview with Sean and learns some intimate details that only Anna's husband could have known. However, no scientific investigation is undertaken to analyze any birthmarks, deformities, phobias, abilities, or addictions that might establish a link between the two. Anna and Joseph simply talk with the boy's parents but they deny that he has ever mentioned these thoughts before and there is no further investigation. Though reluctant, Sean's parents agree to have Sean stay at Anna's for a few days. When Sean summons Anna to meet him in Central Park in a spot that only she knows, they rendezvous at the underpass where her husband died and she begins to fall in love with the boy. (This leads to some awkward moments as when the two share a bath together but the scene is innocent and there is no hint of exploitation.)

Slow-paced, brooding, and atmospheric, Birth maintains a high degree of suspense throughout. While the film works as a compelling psychological thriller and metaphysical mystery, it seems to present the idea that people reincarnate immediately, and that details of past lives are easily accessible to conscious memory. Despite the flaws in logic, writers Jean-Claude Carriére and Milo Addica keep the dialogue on a realistic level and the film is held together by Kidman's highly nuanced performance. One of the best sequences is a two-minute close up of Anna at a concert, her face moving through a range of emotions that make us wonder what thoughts are going through her head. While the ending lets us down with a contrived set of occurrences that put the film on safe neutral ground, Birth courageously reminds us of the essential mystery of life and death. On a more down to earth level, it also presents the pitfalls inherent in holding onto attachments that prevent us from living fully in the present moment.

The Chinese consider water as the abode of the dragon and the source of all life. Dennis Villeneuve's Maelström (2000) is filled with multiple levels of water imagery: a fish as narrator, a suicide attempt in a river, the main character falling in love with a frogman, and scenes of repeated cleansing by water. Maelström is a playfully alive but dramatically intense portrayal of a pleasure-seeking 25-year old boutique executive (Marie-Josée Croze) who runs into an emotional storm following an abortion and a fatal accident that she does not report. Like many who live solely for their own pleasure, she manages to avoid responsibility but ends up having to deal with the results and becomes transformed in the process.

Pierre Lebeau narrates the film in a heavy voice as a fish awaiting decapitation. Villenueve said that, "For me, it (the fish) is a kind of metaphor for all the storytellers from the beginning of mankind." It is an odd conceit but strangely effective. The fish tells the story of Bibi (Croze), and we first meet her at a medical clinic undergoing an abortion. Guilt is written on her face as we witness her descent into alcohol and drugs. She is fired for incompetence by her brother and, after drinking heavily, is involved in a hit-and-run accident in which a Norwegian fish industry worker is killed. Spiraling downward, she attempts suicide but survives and falls in love with the dead man's son Evian (Jean-Nicholas Verreault) after attending the father's funeral.

Maelström does not sound much like a romantic comedy but it is full of off-the-wall humor and suffers from an overabundance of cleverness. The film does not progress in linear fashion and there are several shifts of time and perspective to keep the viewer on edge. One flashback shows the chain of events that follows a complaint about the quality of the octopus in a restaurant, and a stranger (Marc Gélinas) keeps popping up in strange places to offer words of wisdom to the characters. The soundtrack also varies, from Tom Waits to Edvard Grieg, even including "Good Morning, Starshine" from Hair. Philosophical, surreal, absurd, symbolic, all with a creative touch similar to Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie, Maelström tells us that the secret of life is…to be continued.

One of the most commonly reported aspects of near-death experiences is the life review, the seeing and re-experiencing of major and trivial events of one’s life, sometimes from the perspective of the other people involved. Most say that the single most important lesson they learned is that the actions we think are trivial and unimportant turn out to be the most important, especially ones that involve spontaneous acts of love.

In After Life, by Hirokazu Koreeda, a group of recently deceased people are asked to look back at their life and choose only one memory that they want to take with them to eternity. The process compels people to look at their life in its entirety and see what worked and what was missing. In what looks like a dreary barracks-like way station, civil servants meet with those just crossed over to help them choose the experience they want to hold on to. For some, the choice is easy, for others it is quite difficult. Those that will not or cannot choose are consigned to work in the substation with the newly deceased until they are ready to move on. The counselors work one-on-one with each individual, telling them that they have three days to make their choice. Once a memory is selected, a film crew recreates the memory -- sets are built and the little touches of sights and sounds are selected until the deceased are satisfied that they are witnessing a perfect recreation of their experience. It is that film that they take with them, not the original memory.

At first some choose things such as a trip to Disneyland, a sexual encounter, or a memorable bowl of rice, but later gravitate toward experiences that are more meaningful. The center of the film revolves around those who are unable to choose. Ichiro Watanabe (Taketoshi Naito) is a 70-year old management consultant who has led an uneventful life and is challenged to find a memory he thinks is worth preserving for all time. To help him in this process, he is allowed to scan through piles of videotapes representing each year of his life. One young man wants to choose a dream instead of an actual event. Another wants to forget his past entirely, and an elderly woman is stuck in the mindset of a nine-year old girl.

After Life is the story of the caseworkers as well. Takashi Mochizuki (Arata) has been stuck in limbo because he cannot find any happiness in his twenty-two years until he realizes how his short life deeply affected someone else. His perfect realization also affects a co-worker Shiori (Susumu Terajima) who has fallen in love with him. After Life is a beautiful and touching film that allows us to reflect on the things that brought us joy in our own life, and to recognize that true happiness lies, not in outward symbols of success, but in giving ourselves to others.

©2004 Howard Schumann
CineScene