The Trouble with Being Born

Director: Sandra Wolner
Starring: Lena Watson, Dominik Warta, Ingrid Burkhard
Distributor: Potential Films
Runtime: 93 mins. Reviewed in Dec 2020

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Rating notes: High impact themes

The question arises: how to avoid the trouble with being born? Robotics? Artificial intelligence? Androids? Programming?

Here is a narrative, in two parts, illustrating some speculations about these questions. It opens mysteriously, echoes and images of pregnancy, but then focuses on a young girl, Elli, and her delight in nature, happy in a swimming pool, affectionate with her papa. However, there is something strange about the texture of her face, her eyes. Elli is an android.

There has been a whole history of films about artificial intelligence and androids, going back to the sinister computer, HAL in 2001, A Space Odyssey. Speculations in science fiction and fantasy developed in films of the ’70s and ’80s. Then there was Stephen Spielberg’s AI, based on a story by Stanley Kubrick.

This mysterious film is quieter in tone. The relationship between Elli and papa raises some uncomfortable moments, the nature of the relationship between father and daughter, some sexualisation of the relationship, the question as to who programmed Elli and why, where did the memories come from? And does she absorb them, or are they just like a record playing inside her? And, did papa create Elli and insert the memories to suit himself and his needs, his dead wife, his dead daughter?

And there is the mystery of Elli and her disappearing for long periods, a groove in her programming, the needle stuck, so to speak, making her want to seek out papa are after many years.

No easy answers about the relationship between Ellie and papa and suddenly we are in another city, a different Elli, now becoming Emil. The android is androgynous. And relating to a different person, an elderly woman living a drab life, stuck in her memories of the clash between herself and her brother when they were young, his death. We are still wondering who did this program for the android, the nature of the memories, how the reincarnation (not exactly the correct word) of the brother has an effect on the old lady.

So, while there is narrative, we are really presented with two test cases to illustrate the speculations about the possibility of creating androids, programming them, seeing how they might interact with humans in this version of ‘real life’.

Often slowly paced, with long takes offering an opportunity for the audience to think, reflect and wonder. The Trouble with Being Born is not a film for audiences who are in a hurry. Rather, it is a cinematic exercise in intellectual and emotional provocation about what it is to be a human being – and not.

Peter Malone MSC