Movie Review! Babies
When is a non-dramatic movie . . . actually mostly non-dramatic, but still has its own quiet sense of drama? When it's Thomas Balmès's 2010 documentary Babies!
First things first. Babies is exactly what it claims to be, no more and no less. It doesn't really have much dialogue (none of the stars can talk), and it doesn't exactly have a plot ("Babies grow up"). The title promises babies, and babies is what you get. If watching babies do baby things for 80 minutes is not your speed, then this is not the movie for you.
That said, I did enjoy watching Babies. Babies are pretty inherently interesting; we were all babies once, but we can't remember the experience. So babies tend to seem almost like little aliens. They're clearly intelligent beings, and they look vaguely human-like, but it's difficult to communicate with them, they know nothing about the world, and we know very little about how they think. On one level, Babies is an effort to bring the camera into a baby's world, to see this fascinating place as the baby sees it. You can kind of imagine Balmès making similar films, like Chimpanzees, Dolphins, or Martians. Balmès really gets down and dirty with the babies, often filming from floor level to see things literally from the baby's perspective. Adults occasionally wander in and out of the picture, most often Mama, but the POV is the baby's. Adult dialogue, when it occurs, isn't subtitled. If you happen to speak one of the four languages used in the film, great. You'll get a few words. But, for the majority of the film, none of the babies really understand language, so the audience doesn't get that opportunity, either.
The other thing that's fun about Babies is that it follows four babies from all around the world, so you get to see a nice comparative tour of the first year of life in four different cultures. We meet Ponijao, a little girl from Namibia; Bayar, a little boy from Mongolia; Mari, a little girl from Japan; and Hattie, a little girl from the United States. They're all interesting in their own ways, but what's most fun is watching the variations as these kids go through pretty much the same developmental stages in vastly different environments. Babies are pretty much babies, but their worlds are nothing alike.
As a personality (and one of the things you see in Babies is that babies do have personalities, right from Day One), I kind of liked Ponijao the best. She had the most get-up-and-go of any of the kids, and from the very first moment you see her, she is determined to make a place for herself in the world and let everyone know about it. She's the first baby you meet, in a scene that, for a brief moment, looks kind of like an animated GIF of a National Geographic photo in an article about "The Glorious Tribal People Of Namibia." Two little babies, one a few months older than the other, are sitting in the dust, pounding rocks in imitation of the way their mothers grind grains. The smaller baby is Ponijao, and the larger baby is a little boy who appears to be either a friend or a cousin, but who's usually with her. The scene is all cute and National Geographic-exotic for a few seconds, and then Ponijao spots a battered plastic bottle next to her and reaches for it. Her larger pal immediately tries to take it away from her . . . and Ponijao whips around and chomps down on the other kid's arm! There's a brief scuffle, which ends with Ponijao crying and looking around to make damn sure that there are grownups in the area who know why she's crying, that she's been wronged, and that, dammit, he started it! Just like that, Ponijao washes away all the exoticism and Othering that we might be inclined to burden her with, and sets the stage. Babies are people, too. Not a bad trick for six months old.
Bayar is kind of fun to watch, too. He's growing up in a yurt in Mongolia, and his parents are herders. What's most fun about Bayar is that he has an older brother, little more than a toddler, who is usually okay with Bayar, but who really likes to play with him, poke him, and tease him. Bayar alternates between worshiping his big brother and defending himself from him, and that interaction is hilarious and priceless. The more so, since Bayar's parents are pretty cool about the whole thing and let the kids work things out between themselves for far longer than, say, a U.S. parent would.
Mari and Hattie are less interesting to me. Part of it is that they're growing up in more familiar environments, so there's less of the "parenting that I haven't seen before" angle. And part of it, frankly, is that both Hattie and Mari appear to be only children who aren't seen interacting with other children much. Mari's mother is shown more than Hattie's mother, but neither of them appear to have the chance for unstructured interpersonal time with other kids that Bayar and Ponijao have. Both Hattie and Mari go to Mommy & Me-type classes, but even then, the kids don't interact with each other. Their classes consist of mommy-baby dyads who sing the same songs and bounce their kids to the same rhythms, but otherwise might as well be in different rooms for all the interest they show in each other.
Ethnographically, this setup probably says a lot about different models of child development, and I'm fairly sure that Mari and Hattie's segments were edited to emphasize the isolation a bit, so I'm not going to go into the ethnography. But it does also have a dramatic lesson to teach. Interaction between peers is just more interesting than a single character in isolation. There are single-character shows, sure. The Belle of Amherst, Krapp's Last Tape. But even then, there's some presumption of interaction. Emily Dickinson is talking to the audience and trying to establish as much of a conversation as possible within the limits of a scripted monologue. Krapp is actually interacting with an audiotape that he made when he was younger, which provides at least the illusion of another character on the stage, even though there's just the one actor. We like to see people interacting with each other, and in this respect, Bayar and Ponijao are just more fun to watch.
Of course, the interactions aren't just with people. All four babies grow up around animals. Bayar's family herds goats and cattle and has a few chickens and a cat. Ponijao's family also herds goats, and there are some dogs hanging around. Both Hattie and Mari share their homes with cats. And I have to say, all of these animals deserve prizes for being the most patient, laid-back critters you will ever see. The babies love them. They poke, prod, drool on, sit on, pull the tails of, and stick their hands in the mouths and eyes of these animals, and the animals just sit there and take it. One hopes that Balmès, or whoever his cinematographer was, would have intervened if the animals had really tried to swipe at or bite the babies. But as it is, the interactions that are shown give the sense that the animals just sort of accept that here is a curious juvenile critter just like all the other critters around, and they just fit the poking and prodding into their everyday lives.
Babies isn't an exciting film. The four stars start out not being able to do anything, and end up being able to do more than they could at the beginning. The process is slow, and there isn't all that much of a story arc or a question driving the action. The babies are born, they grow to be a year old. Nothing really terrible happens to any of them in the course of the film. It's just . . . babies. Babies being babies, doing everyday baby things. But they do their baby things with the glorious, full-body commitment that people tend to lose around age five. I think it's that wholehearted, intense focus on people doing things wholeheartedly, with intense focus, that makes Babies such an interesting movie in the end. It's not exciting, but it is meditative. And it sneaks up on you. You think it's going to be really boring, but you can't really turn away, because here's another baby and another one, and, oh look, that first baby has gotten bigger and can do something else, look at that! This is a fantastic movie for a rainy day, or for some time when you're feeling kind of melancholy and want something simple but lovely to remind you why humanity continues on.
First things first. Babies is exactly what it claims to be, no more and no less. It doesn't really have much dialogue (none of the stars can talk), and it doesn't exactly have a plot ("Babies grow up"). The title promises babies, and babies is what you get. If watching babies do baby things for 80 minutes is not your speed, then this is not the movie for you.
That said, I did enjoy watching Babies. Babies are pretty inherently interesting; we were all babies once, but we can't remember the experience. So babies tend to seem almost like little aliens. They're clearly intelligent beings, and they look vaguely human-like, but it's difficult to communicate with them, they know nothing about the world, and we know very little about how they think. On one level, Babies is an effort to bring the camera into a baby's world, to see this fascinating place as the baby sees it. You can kind of imagine Balmès making similar films, like Chimpanzees, Dolphins, or Martians. Balmès really gets down and dirty with the babies, often filming from floor level to see things literally from the baby's perspective. Adults occasionally wander in and out of the picture, most often Mama, but the POV is the baby's. Adult dialogue, when it occurs, isn't subtitled. If you happen to speak one of the four languages used in the film, great. You'll get a few words. But, for the majority of the film, none of the babies really understand language, so the audience doesn't get that opportunity, either.
The other thing that's fun about Babies is that it follows four babies from all around the world, so you get to see a nice comparative tour of the first year of life in four different cultures. We meet Ponijao, a little girl from Namibia; Bayar, a little boy from Mongolia; Mari, a little girl from Japan; and Hattie, a little girl from the United States. They're all interesting in their own ways, but what's most fun is watching the variations as these kids go through pretty much the same developmental stages in vastly different environments. Babies are pretty much babies, but their worlds are nothing alike.
As a personality (and one of the things you see in Babies is that babies do have personalities, right from Day One), I kind of liked Ponijao the best. She had the most get-up-and-go of any of the kids, and from the very first moment you see her, she is determined to make a place for herself in the world and let everyone know about it. She's the first baby you meet, in a scene that, for a brief moment, looks kind of like an animated GIF of a National Geographic photo in an article about "The Glorious Tribal People Of Namibia." Two little babies, one a few months older than the other, are sitting in the dust, pounding rocks in imitation of the way their mothers grind grains. The smaller baby is Ponijao, and the larger baby is a little boy who appears to be either a friend or a cousin, but who's usually with her. The scene is all cute and National Geographic-exotic for a few seconds, and then Ponijao spots a battered plastic bottle next to her and reaches for it. Her larger pal immediately tries to take it away from her . . . and Ponijao whips around and chomps down on the other kid's arm! There's a brief scuffle, which ends with Ponijao crying and looking around to make damn sure that there are grownups in the area who know why she's crying, that she's been wronged, and that, dammit, he started it! Just like that, Ponijao washes away all the exoticism and Othering that we might be inclined to burden her with, and sets the stage. Babies are people, too. Not a bad trick for six months old.
Bayar is kind of fun to watch, too. He's growing up in a yurt in Mongolia, and his parents are herders. What's most fun about Bayar is that he has an older brother, little more than a toddler, who is usually okay with Bayar, but who really likes to play with him, poke him, and tease him. Bayar alternates between worshiping his big brother and defending himself from him, and that interaction is hilarious and priceless. The more so, since Bayar's parents are pretty cool about the whole thing and let the kids work things out between themselves for far longer than, say, a U.S. parent would.
Mari and Hattie are less interesting to me. Part of it is that they're growing up in more familiar environments, so there's less of the "parenting that I haven't seen before" angle. And part of it, frankly, is that both Hattie and Mari appear to be only children who aren't seen interacting with other children much. Mari's mother is shown more than Hattie's mother, but neither of them appear to have the chance for unstructured interpersonal time with other kids that Bayar and Ponijao have. Both Hattie and Mari go to Mommy & Me-type classes, but even then, the kids don't interact with each other. Their classes consist of mommy-baby dyads who sing the same songs and bounce their kids to the same rhythms, but otherwise might as well be in different rooms for all the interest they show in each other.
Ethnographically, this setup probably says a lot about different models of child development, and I'm fairly sure that Mari and Hattie's segments were edited to emphasize the isolation a bit, so I'm not going to go into the ethnography. But it does also have a dramatic lesson to teach. Interaction between peers is just more interesting than a single character in isolation. There are single-character shows, sure. The Belle of Amherst, Krapp's Last Tape. But even then, there's some presumption of interaction. Emily Dickinson is talking to the audience and trying to establish as much of a conversation as possible within the limits of a scripted monologue. Krapp is actually interacting with an audiotape that he made when he was younger, which provides at least the illusion of another character on the stage, even though there's just the one actor. We like to see people interacting with each other, and in this respect, Bayar and Ponijao are just more fun to watch.
Of course, the interactions aren't just with people. All four babies grow up around animals. Bayar's family herds goats and cattle and has a few chickens and a cat. Ponijao's family also herds goats, and there are some dogs hanging around. Both Hattie and Mari share their homes with cats. And I have to say, all of these animals deserve prizes for being the most patient, laid-back critters you will ever see. The babies love them. They poke, prod, drool on, sit on, pull the tails of, and stick their hands in the mouths and eyes of these animals, and the animals just sit there and take it. One hopes that Balmès, or whoever his cinematographer was, would have intervened if the animals had really tried to swipe at or bite the babies. But as it is, the interactions that are shown give the sense that the animals just sort of accept that here is a curious juvenile critter just like all the other critters around, and they just fit the poking and prodding into their everyday lives.
Babies isn't an exciting film. The four stars start out not being able to do anything, and end up being able to do more than they could at the beginning. The process is slow, and there isn't all that much of a story arc or a question driving the action. The babies are born, they grow to be a year old. Nothing really terrible happens to any of them in the course of the film. It's just . . . babies. Babies being babies, doing everyday baby things. But they do their baby things with the glorious, full-body commitment that people tend to lose around age five. I think it's that wholehearted, intense focus on people doing things wholeheartedly, with intense focus, that makes Babies such an interesting movie in the end. It's not exciting, but it is meditative. And it sneaks up on you. You think it's going to be really boring, but you can't really turn away, because here's another baby and another one, and, oh look, that first baby has gotten bigger and can do something else, look at that! This is a fantastic movie for a rainy day, or for some time when you're feeling kind of melancholy and want something simple but lovely to remind you why humanity continues on.