Continuity mistake: Towards the end of the film Nicole Kidman is having her wedding photos taken. The photographer poses her for the shot, but when he actually takes the photo, the background has changed. When he poses her, there are just trees and bushes behind her, but when he takes the photo, the trees and bushes are gone and people are walking around.
Birth (2004)
Directed by: Jonathan Glazer
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Danny Huston, Lauren Bacall, Cameron Bright
Continuity mistake: In the bedroom scene where Joseph discusses the boy's letter with Anna, we see Anna putting on her earrings, interestingly enough, her earrings change in each shot. First we see her putting on her 'left' earring while she is still standing by the bureau, then she sits down on the bed and puts on her 'left' earring again, then she stands up - and in the next shot we see her at the buffet where she is suddenly already wearing her 'right' earring, but miraculously missing her 'left' earring. (00:22:00 - 00:23:25)
Trivia: During the controversial bathtub scene, Cameron Bright was never naked and he and Nicole Kidman were never even in the same room during the filming of the bath scene, apart from one camera shot, and when this shot happened both actors wore special clothes that were not visible to the camera.
Anna: I've met somebody who seems to be Sean... I really hoped that he was Sean. I wanted him to be Sean. But I knew he wasn't... The thing is, I'm falling in love with Sean again. That's what's happening. I need you to tell him to go away. Because I can't do it.
Young Sean: I'm not Sean... because I love you.
Anna: You make no sense.
Anna: You certainly had me fooled. I thought you were my dead husband... but you're just a little boy in my bathtub.
Question: What does Joseph whisper in Anna's ear in the final scene at the beach? Her face reacts to something he's saying to her.
Question: Does Sean really possess the spirit of Anna's dead husband, or does the little boy just read the letters he finds buried in the woods, become obsessed with Anna and pretend to be the reincarnation of her husband?
Answer: I would say that he was "in love" with her before reading the letters. Once he read them, he kinda became convinced that he was the reincarnated spirit of her husband. He clearly is not, since the original Sean was not really in love with her.
I think it was a grey area between the two...I think in life, we are exposed to and vulnerable to, sin. In our rebirth, sin is erased. We don't remember it. I think we remember love. I interpreted the boy as being the reincarnation of Anna's Sean, but only remembering the love he originally had for her, before it was tainted with lust and temptation.
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Answer: I think that 'what sets Anna off' at the ending was Sean's letter to her...where in the very last line, he says, "I guess we'll meet in another life." This shows that Sean really was reincarnated, but he so didn't want Anna to learn about the the affair with Clifford's wife, that he (Sean) decided to let go of Anna, possibly for the time being until he grows up, leaving room for a future sequel.