A Comparison of P.S. and Birth

Grief and obsession are often two characteristics used to describe people who are mourning the death of a loved one or friend. The raw display of emotion is on full display in the novel P.S. which is written by Helen Schulman and Birth which is directed by Jonathan Glazer. The characters in both the novel and film react very similar when faced with the grief of a loved one and many themes overlap as the reader and viewer tries to gain a better understanding into the emotions of the characters.

Both the novel P.S. and the film Birth share the common theme of the reincarnation of the dead and obsession with the people who seem to come back to life from the dead. In the novel P.S., an art school admissions director named Louise Harrington believes that her former boyfriend Scott Feinstadt has come back from the dead in the form of a graduate student with the same first and last name as her old boyfriend. In the film Birth, actress Nicole Kidman plays the role of Anna, a widow at the age of thirty who has lost her husband to a heart attack. Anna's obsession with her former lover starts off with a ten year old boy walking into her apartment and telling her that he is Sean, her former husband. Although Anna doesn't believe the young boy at first, his uncanny knack for knowing about her personal life with her husband Sean makes her rethink her position. She starts to truly believe that this boy is her husband reincarnated and the more Anna sees and talks to the young boy, the deeper she falls in love with him.

The obsession that grabs hold of Louise and Anna even threatens the relationships that they have with their friends and family members. Louise's fixation with Scott Feinstadt causes her to become paranoid of losing her lover to her best friend named Missy. Although Louise's fears are justified and her instincts are later proved to be correct, the hate between Louise and her friend deepens as they both try to deceit one another. In the film Birth Anna's obsession and bond with the boy Sean becomes so strong that it threatens to tear apart her own family and break up her engagement to her fiancé Joseph. Anna's relatives and fiancé all claim that she has lost her sense of reason and logic as she is falling in love with a boy who cannot possibly be her deceased husband. However, Anna refuses to listen to them and in her heart she wants to believe that her husband Sean has been brought back to life.

Vanity is also an interesting theme that both the novel and film share. In Birth, Anna is infatuated with material items and her family enjoys an accumulation of wealth and possessions. They live in an expensive apartment and live in a lavish lifestyle and appearances are everything in Anna's family. Perhaps that is why it is all the more ironic that she believes that a small ten year old boy really can be her lost lover. On the other hand, her family is unable to see past the façade of a ten year old boy and his innocence. Likewise, in P.S. Louise is obsessed with buying fashionable clothing and doesn't care about the cost.

The film and novel both show how Louise and Anna are unable to get on with their lives once their lovers die unexpectedly. Their lives are put on hold and freeze at that moment in time even though their lives are continuing right before their eyes. In the novel P.S. Louise's life seems to be stuck in the year which Scott Feinstadt died as she still remains in love with him despite Scott leaving Louise to go away to college. This feeling of grief is a sentiment that Louise never seems to recover from as she desperately tries to find clues or traits to prove to her that this graduate student really is Scott Feinstadt. The grief that Louise holds has not healed and she yearns to win back the affections of her lover that she once had. Louise believes that she has been given a second chance to make her lustful relationship with Scott work and a chance to resume her life once again where she left it on hold. On the other hand, Anna's grief in Birth has not fully healed either from her husband's passing ten years ago. Anna's grief is prevalent throughout the film and very vivid to the viewer in several of the scenes. The most gripping scene of the film shows a close-up of Anna's face while watching a play and her emotional state. She turns to the memories of her late husband for reassurance who has seemingly been reincarnated and brought back to her. As the tears run down her cheek, she too believes that she has been given another chance to mend her failed marriage with her husband.

The novel P.S. and film Birth share many similar themes and character traits including the issues of grief, reincarnation, vanity and obsession. When a loved one is believed to have been brought back from the dead and reincarnated it causes a character to lose control over their emotions and deeply impacts their lives.