Birth · reception & legacy
2004 · Jonathan Glazer
How Birth has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Booed at its 2004 Venice premiere and dismissed as creepy Oscar-bait misfire, Birth has since been reappraised as one of the great underrated films of the 2000s — a rehabilitation that accelerated as Under the Skin and The Zone of Interest turned Glazer into a canonical director.
What's debated
Fans still argue over whether the premise is profound or irredeemably creepy — and whether the critics who jeered it in 2004 simply couldn't see past the scandal to the film underneath.
Its footprint
The long, unbroken close-up of Nicole Kidman's face at the opera is endlessly screencapped and cited as one of the great close-ups of modern cinema, and Alexandre Desplat's Central Park prologue score has a devoted life of its own.
Where it stands
A textbook canon climber: from scandal-tainted flop to cinephile touchstone, now a fixture of 'most underrated films of the 2000s' lists and a Letterboxd favourite among Glazer devotees.