the best movie you’ve never seen

Birth follows a woman who is preparing to move on with her life after her husband’s death, when a ten-year-old boy appears and calmly insists that he is her husband reincarnated.

I first saw this film in 2004, alone, late at night, at the Lagoon Theater in Uptown, Minneapolis. I remember wondering what sort of work I had stumbled into. I knew of Jonathon Glazer’s work, but at the time, I never had a chance to see his 2001 film, Sexy Beast. Birth was the first, which I found quite fitting.

Birth is to cinema what Harold Budd is to music. It carries a visual presence that feels almost ecclesiastical, like attending a late-night vigil in a different language. It’s a film that I can’t make sense of. It’s a story about mystery, after all.

I keep thinking about how the story asks, well, what if… “How can this be?” Nicole Kidman’s character asks. How can this child be my husband?

Despite her disbelief, the film is gracious to her season of grief. The way Jonathon Glazer allows doubt to sit beside faith, is why I return to it every few years. Simply because I don’t have to make sense of it, or I don’t need to make sense of it.