Bébé(s)

I just got back from a screening of this documentary that examines (sans narrative, thankfully) the first year of four babies, one from mongolia, one from tokyo, one from namibia, and one from san francisco, more accurately representing the world population than if it were four western babies.

though the film as it stands is worth watching and is an entertaining piece of cinema, it never quite reaches the moment it seems to want to build towards: the humanity of all people. it settles instead for being a cute, fluff piece for the audience to coo over with numerous "oohs" and "awwws."

don't get me wrong, though-the babies themselves are great, and watching their different personalities operating in different cultures is the driving force of the film. it's a very watchable film, just not as poignant as it could (or maybe should) have been.

Greetings again from the darkness. About 4 months ago I saw this trailer and knew immediately I wanted to see it. The word "documentary" is usually box office death, with only a few exceptions. Those exceptions usually involve penguins and Morgan Freeman. Sorry, no penguins here. Only babies. And goats. And cats.

Director Thomas Balmes from France had a pretty good idea - show the first year of life for four babies from different parts of the world. The babies are from Namibia, Mongolia, Tokyo and San Francisco. It seems his ideas pretty much stopped there. What we see are interlocking scenes of each of the babies at similar stages of developments. The stark contrast in environment seems to be the driving force of photography.

Developed countries vs. un-developed countries. Is it best to raise your child in the wilderness or in the big city? Does it even matter? We see babies rolling on dirt hut floors and poking at goat's ears. We see other babies going through baby yoga and group therapy sessions. Apparently the big surprise is that all four babies learn to crawl, walk and talk no matter the level of luxury or amount of parental attention.

Roger Ebert says all babies are cute. Any fan of "Seinfeld" will tell you that's just not true. What is true is that babies are curious and observant and creative. No one knows if the over-indulgent and over-protectiveness of high society actually helps or stifles the development of babies. What we do know is that life finds a way and babies keep growing and learning, whether in a hot tub with mom or in a bowl that a wild goat uses as drinking water.

I just wish the director had put more substance into the delivery. We are simply observers in quick snapshots of each baby. We get very little from the parents or other kids. The obvious points are made, but in the end, this feels a bit empty and probably better served on the National Geographic channel than the local cinema.

This movie shows the development of four babies from birth to about one year old. They are from extreme different cultures - Namibia, Mongolia, Japan and the United States. the movie is well-crafted - the photography and musical score is very good. There is no narrative. The movie shows babies as they explore, wonder and learn and I found it easy to create my own narrative as I did the same while watching them.

The diversity among them was part of the narrative. Namibia appeared barely touched by technology; Tokyo utterly transformed its landscape. It was interesting that the Japanese parents sang the birthday song in English and that the simple yurt the Mongolians lived in had an accompanying satellite dish. It is also amazing that each baby's unique personality emerges so early in their lives.

The universality of man was the other part of the narrative. Put a loincloth or a business suit on a man and a man is still a man. I wondered why are all babies so cute, be they humans, puppies or goats? Why does the first word in any language appear to be "mama"? Why were the animals so ambivalent and nonthreatening to the babies? Moms seem to naturally be tender with their little ones. Each baby experienced the struggle and triumph of learning to crawl, stand, walk and run just like the other billions of us.

This world has horrific evil, violence and darkness. But it also has beauty that about takes my breath away. People say "stop and smell the roses". Sometimes I find it good to look at a tree, or the clouds or stars, or people at the mall, just walking by. In the same way, I enjoyed watching the babies. It was a thoroughly entertaining and enriching way to spend 79 minutes.

With no narration, virtually no subtitles, dialog mostly either indistinct or in an unknown foreign language, and no music at all, Babies lets you paint a very wide variety of interpretations on it. You can't even shoehorn it into the stereotype of a filmmaker who only tips his hand a couple times over the duration of the film; the filmmaker doesn't show his hand in a completely unambiguous way even once. If this film turns out to not have a lot of mass audience appeal, my guess is it will be because of this almost militant ambiguity, more or less forcing every audience member to do all their own thinking.

Perhaps the most common way to interpret the film is a simply a huge "cute fix". This interpretation isn't necessarily bad, or even definitively overly shallow. What would be wrong-headed though is straight-jacketing the film so the "cute" interpretation is the _only_ legitimate interpretation, something that's definitely not the case.

Another way to look at the film is the real topic is comparative societies, and it happens to use babies as a window to get at the real topic.

Different values around and approaches to sanitation come up quite often; one could even possibly interpret them as the main theme of the film. Some of the babies are shown crawling around in the dirt, so much so their legs are a different color. And some of them are shown crawling around in shallow pools of water. Some mothers are shown cleaning their baby's bottom after a poop by scraping their bare bottom on the mother's knee, then wiping the poop off their knee with an old corn cob. On the other hand some babies are shown pooping in their diapers which we know they'll have to continue wearing for a while. Yes some of the things we see are very different from how we're used to doing it (which to be fully honest isn't always as good as we're used to thinking it is:-). But as far as we can see none of the babies ever gets sick - suggesting that sanitation styles don't matter as much as we think.

Different approaches to discipline are shown only a couple times, contrasting the "spanking" and "not spanking" approaches. In both cases we get the impression the baby can't even figure out what behavior caused the discipline (even though it only happened a few tens of seconds earlier). The message seems to be that trying to discipline really really young kids is just a waste of time. In any case, these few scenes are so sparse and so brief it's obvious they can't form the basis of a valid interpretation of the whole film.

It was clear babies need to see and touch in order to learn; they're very much concrete learners and aren't set up to handle abstract concepts. The baby seeing a slaughtered goat in the dirt or learning to eat bits of fatty meat from a communal pot or even watching flies buzz around some bare bones seemed to be on their way to grasping how life works. On the other hand the baby subjected to a bunch of mothers sitting on a carpeted floor and singing a song about "the earth is our mother" clearly didn't get it; in fact, the baby tried to simply escape from the whole scenario.

To some extent all babies want the same few things, and raising babies is focused on these things: getting enough sleep and enough to eat, fitting in with older siblings, figuring out how to move around and ultimately how to talk - these simple things fully occupy babies. What seemed different to me is where the babies were headed - some were taking their first small steps toward adulthood (although clearly it would take a long time to get all the way there), while others were headed for a separate period of "childhood". While the contrast between babyhood->adulthood and babyhood->childhood->adulthood was present throughout the main part of the film, it was especially obvious watching the somewhat older toddlers in the considerable additional footage beside the closing credits. Those headed directly for eventual adulthood started to play with and mimic the behaviors their elders used to obtain food. On the other hand those headed for childhood never saw an adult doing something they got paid for, and apparently had no concept of earning one's living.

Documentary style exposition of the first year or so of the lives and experiences of four tiny tots from four widely divergent cultures. We watch basically from their eager-to-learn perspectives as these debutantes to the world learn to embrace life through the cultural lens of their respective families.

The babies' individual stories are told concurrently, with little vignettes of parallel events shown side-by-side to compare and contrast how the rudimentary experiences common to all people are filtered into the different cultures and life styles, but not essentially different in the end. Learning to crawl, walk, how to interact with others, learning about self, etc. are all shown in the normal development chronology. The children hobble, falter, struggle, cry in anguish and frustration, make pratfalls, experiment, learn, and finally succeed. And then: move on to the next challenge in the crazy and wonderful journey of life.

It's difficult to watch the children when they fail or feel pain. It's also cute and funny as their unique personalities begin to emerge: the San Francisco baby has the most humorous moment with her logical and effective reaction to an irritating PC kiddy song. There's very little dialogue; only a few words by the adults is used, as necessary for a few key events. Usually there's cooing or crying by the little ones. The intent works: the kids are the stars.

A gentle documentary that intentionally paces slow and focuses on the babies and how they react. Sweet, joyous, and upbeat.