BERLINALE 2020 - The Trouble With Being Born
70th BERLINALE FILM FESTIVALWhat would happen if a pedophile acted out his fantasies with a robot constructed to look like a child? This is one of many difficult questions at the center of Sandra Wollner’s The Trouble with Being Born, which debuted at the Berlinale this year and winning a Special Jury Prize in spite of walkouts. Still, the film’s staying power lies in its answers to that question, which are just as challenging and opaque.
Ten-year-old Elli (Lena Watson) seems to be a typical little girl living with her father (Dominik Warta) in a secluded home surrounded by woods. As the scenes roll on the more questionable their relationship becomes, as well as Elli’s appearance and behaviour. She is not quite real and eventually proves to be completely artificial – removable body parts, programmable memories and the ability to be rebooted by phone. Even more disturbing, she refers to her companion as “Papa” but the real backstory to their relationship is never fully established.
The Trouble with Being Born plays out like an android’s dream, but its details are circuitous and hazy. Scenes are presented out of order; monologues repeat themselves and viewpoints shift from one character to another without warning. There is also no solid sense of time or place, blurring the lines between what we’re seeing and what characters are – seemingly – remembering. At one point, it seems possible that there are multiple Elli's traversing the grounds and in a particularly revealing sequence, a teenaged human version of Elli (Jana McKinnon) pays “Papa” a visit, but never refers to him that way.
In the meantime, civilization continues to exist beyond the woods and seems to be a short drive away. Timm Kroeger’s cinematography dwells on pedestrian sights like crowded shopping centers, empty parking lots and busy highways. Through happenstance, Elli finds herself in these new settings, continuing her journey as Wollner’s “anti-Pinocchio”, which is where the story takes unpredictable turns.
The Trouble with Being Born is both a familiar but challenging watch. It is bookended by scenes of creation and destruction, reminiscent of Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin, and has been likened to the cold, detached aesthetic of Michael Haneke. It has also earned comparisons with other A.I. what if scenarios seen on film over the past decades, including Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Alex Garland’s Ex Machina and Michael Almereyda’s Marjorie Prime. These films individually confront the idea of child robots, sexual exploitation and fabricated memories within technology, but The Trouble with Being Born is the first who has tackled all of them at once.
For all of its upsetting implications and shocking imagery, the film proves to be more of a condemnation than an endorsement of Elli’s abusive origins. Although she does not display emotions and is not technically a child, she behaves like one. By being used for sexual servitude, she comes to know and desire nothing else. In fact, she is drawn to and returns to that function repeatedly, which is startlingly and disturbingly . . . well, human.
It’s possible that another thorny question Wollner is posing is whether people can psychologically and sexually abuse technology, yielding the same tragedies we see in the children and adults who suffer from it. If you have the stomach to sit through The Trouble with Being Born, it seems that the answer is an emphatic “yes.” Elli’s journey is less about birth and discovery as it is about stasis and death, and her consciousness proves to be infinite in its wanting to return home. The problem is what waits for her there, and if she truly knows any better. After all, why she was brought into existence in the first place?
*Lena Watson is a pseudonym to protect the child actress’s identity in this production. Her likeness was also altered by using a wig and facial prosthetics throughout the film, not only adding to her synthetic appearance but obscuring her features.