Monday, June 17, 2019

Great Moments In Movie Shelves #185

.
"This is my desk.
I used to work here."

We never see Anna's original husband Sean sitting at this desk before his supposed pubescent reincarnation plunks himself down and says this in Jonathan Glazer's 2004 masterpiece Birth -- we never see Original Sean at all except kept at a distance in the film's opening credits as he jogs through Central Park, just before summarily dropping dead midway through a tunnel. (It's always a tunnel.) But judging by the way everyone reacts to New Sean's proclamation...


... it would seem that yes, Original Sean did indeed sit there and work there while he was still alive. Or last alive? First alive? Anyway not much of anything of Original Sean remains in this astonishingly well appointed apartment -- you certainly get the feeling it was all there well before he was and it will be there long after any of these people are still around; it's not a home where people leave histories, it's a museum they move through gingerly, not wanting to upset the past, a thing much bigger and older than any of them. (A pack of love letters try to make their way inside, but end up buried in the dirt where Sean died instead.) Still once New Sean lays claim to this space he becomes imprinted on it...

... quite literally. With one fast fade Anna's new fiancé Joseph is obliterated, reduced to a shadowy ghost now haunting the hallways seemingly now trapped inside of New Sean's brain. His presence is rendered redundant -- hey honey hubby's home, thanks for keeping the bed warm but he'll take it over from here thank you very much. It only makes sense...

... that Joseph's last stand a couple of scenes later would take place here in this same room that New Sean has used to reclaim the title of "Man of the House" -- Joseph makes a desperate and pathetic show of his superior big man manliness...

... literally cutting New Sean off from the rest of 
the family and attacking him in there. 
But it won't keep, the dam is breached...

... the whole ship's tipped. 
There's nowhere left to sink...




... but beneath the waves,
start all over again.


1 comment:

JVD said...

This one was truly bizarre and wonderful. That Glazer is a good one.