The most underrated film of 2004

Sexy Beast marked the arrival of a major new director in Jonathan Glazer and while being its polar opposite, Birth is as good a film and it stayed with me for much longer than many films I saw last year.

Forget anything you heard of Birth resembling The Sixth Sense, this is not about ghosts or twists. If anything this is closer to Soderbergs remake of Solaris in themes and atmosphere. Both films are slow but hypnotic studies of grief, obsession and second chances. Bunuel's frequent collaborator Jean-Claude Carrière worked on the script which may account to the films subversive nature, though accusations of child pornography, whipped up buy the British tabloid press, are utterly unfounded. Im not always a fan of Nicole Kidman, but she gives a touching performance here and Danny Huston as her long suffering fiance is utterly fantastic. Alexandre Desplat composed what I thought was the most beautiful score for a film last year.

I know people who didn't like the end, but I found it deeply moving and it is actually much more complex than it may seem at first.