Glenn Whipp: Nicole Kidman on making 'Birth' and why she chooses films that aren't a 'soothing bath'

LOS ANGELES — By now, the shot should be familiar: Nicole Kidman sitting in a theater, her face registering, among other things, hope and wonder.

Except the masterful sequence I'm contemplating isn't the one from the ubiquitous AMC Theatres ad that has been worshiped and parodied the last three years, but in Jonathan Glazer's 2004 film "Birth." In addition to ecstasy, Kidman's expression also conveys shock and anguish and, finally, acceptance of the impossible. All in two minutes.

Here's how it plays: Attending the opera with her fiance, Kidman's character, Anna, arrives unsettled and you can understand why. A preternaturally calm 10-year-old boy has recently turned up at her Manhattan apartment — at her engagement party, no less — and announced that he's her reincarnated husband, a man who collapsed 10 years ago while jogging in Central Park. Anna has been turning over the boy's words in her mind for days. Seated now, with Wagner's "Die Walküre" booming in the background, Anna decides to surrender to the unimaginable and embrace the