making life beautiful

watching roberto benigni's multi award-winning life is beautiful and jonathan glazer's latest film, birth, starring nicole kidman in a single day couldn't have been more contrasting.

while the former used humour to deal with a sensitive topic like the halocaust, the latter was more upfront and employed suspense to bring to light the limitless extent of a woman's lingering love and affection for her dead husband -- even if it's an apparent child incarnation of him.

but what didn't fail to connect was the fact how one's imagination can make your life beautiful.

in life is beautiful, italian jew guido (benito benigni) used his powerful imagination to protect his young son from the harsh reality of being in a concentration camp during world war 2. liking the whole experience to a game, he manipulates his son so that he would cooperate to maintain his non-visibility to ensure their survival. while other kids and elderly people were killed when the nazis forced them to go for a 'shower' -- which was actually the nazis' way of getting these people to the gas chambers -- little giosue was saved because of his petulant disdain for taking showers as he knew them to be. his imagination saves the day for his young son and his beautiful "princess" wife, but not his own life as he endeavoured to gather his wife.

in birth, on the other hand, we see anna (nicole kidman) a widow whose husband sean died 10 years ago, on the verge of a new life with a new man, joseph. however, just when she thought she was finally ready to move on, a 10-year-old boy comes along to claim that he is a reincarnation of her dead husband. in what was initially regarded as a prank, the relationship between anna and joseph soon descends into a farce as anna's love for sean becomes ignited again. just as she was about to give up everything to be with the little boy, the truth surfaces. the little boy is not sean, he merely thinks he is sean because he happened to chance upon a whole set of love letters exchanged between sean and his secret lover. the little boy is no "mr incarnation," he is merely psychotic.

but what striked me most was how what was initially perceived as something so insane can be almost perceived as the truth and how emotions and deep rooted feelings can get the better of fragile sanity. perhaps the little boy's intense gaze and uncanny knowledge of anna's life finally bought anna over, but fact remains that the boy's knowledge was haphazard and limited because what he knew only came from the buried love letters he uncovered one night.

just as your imagination can run wild to make your life beautiful, sometimes it's also within our grasp whether to do something that will ensure our lives descend into utter chaos. while you see anna eventually going back to joseph's side begging him to forgive her mistake, you can't help but feel that she has not and perhaps will never fully recover from the traumatic loss. that to anna, joseph is perhaps just more than just a willing substitute for sean.

two unconventional narratives, one conventional human experience -- love.