Nobody sees the little boy come into the apartment, but suddenly there he is, a stranger in the room at a family birthday party. I am Sean, he says. Sean is the name of Anna s husband, who died 10 years ago. The boy s name is Sean, but that s not what he means. What he means is that he
is Sean and that when Sean died while jogging in Central Park, he was reborn and now here he stands, age 10.
Since the first two scenes of Birth show the death and the birth, we re prepared for the reincarnation. What I wasn t expecting was a film that treats it as intelligent, skeptical adults might. They don t believe in reincarnation. Neither did the original Sean; the movie opens with a black screen and we hear him giving a speech: As a man of science, I just don t believe that mumbo jumbo.