Description

This video from Thesubstream raises the question: What's the freakin' babydeal with the babymovie?

Transcript

HotDocs '10 Spotlight on Babies It’s Friday May 7th and in theatres today in selected theatres, is a film that opens this HotDocs festival called Babies. It’s been getting a lot a press. This weeks’ entertainment weekly look Tony Starks on the cover but what’s inside? Babies. So when discussing documentary film, it always kind of boils down to this day of whether the function of documentaries is the objective is to present your subject in a way that kind of is hands off. And just present the viewer with the information that you documented and allow them to draw their own conclusion. Or is it a film in that it’s made by a film maker, an artist if you will with a point of view. And should documentaries have a point of view? And should they try and convince you of something rather than let you draw that conclusion yourself. But regardless of what side of that debate you’re on, you can’t deny that there is a genre of documentary films. That usually more or less gets 95% of the way to presenting their subjects objectively. And that is nature documentaries. Although what’s funny is that even nature documentaries can seem subjective. Take for example March of the Penguins which came out three years ago. And everyone was like, wow documentary about penguins and how the family unit of penguin life is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Some people rate is as a straight up nature documentary that was beautiful to watch. Other people totally kind of seized on it as a film that champion the pro life movement which is kind of interesting. Those people convinced that, that’s what the message of the film that was trying to get across. So maybe it doesn’t matter if you are 100% objective with your subject or if you do kind of let your own opinion drive the film. Because people are going to interpret it how they are going to interpret it which brings me babies. That show over a week ago, fantastic film. Director Thomas Balmes basically as far as I can tell shows four locations in the world at random. Namibia, Mongolia, Tokyo Japan and San Francisco and in each location shows a baby, a new born baby to follow in its’ first year of life on this earth. There is no dialogue, there are no interviews just babies, 100% babies. All babies all the time babies taking their first step, babies crying, babies in putting a bunch of dirt in their mouths. Whatever babies do in their first year of life he tried to capture it. Great film no denying that. It’s in the top views. Fantastic and cut together is really well. What’s interesting though is because I’m kind of cynical and bit of a dark soul, halfway through this movie I was looking for an angle. I was like trying to figure out what this guy was trying to say, the way he kind of inter-cuts the different life experiences and the different stages of development of each baby. I was trying to figure out if there was some sort of commenting made about the difference in cultures and how impoverished families in Africa raise their babies with seemingly to our westernized little regard for their safety versus babies in San Francisco that maybe are cuddled a little bit too much. What is this guy trying to say? Is he trying to get a reaction out of me? Is he trying to be like babies in this part of the world are better off than babies in this part of the world. Parents over here are too paranoid and they don’t let their babies just run free and be happy. These babies over here seem more free even though they don’t have the future comforts of these babies which seem more neurotic. This baby learns to walk before this baby. But this baby spends its days hanging out with roosters and goats. Just what is the point of this documentary about babies? Well by the end of the documentary, it became clear that the point is, that baby’s pretty cool, babies across the world no matter where – what their upbringing is, are basically the same. They develop at the same rate. They’re amazing creatures. Fascinating to watch and I was kind of left in this seminal sate but I was left with the overwhelming feeling that no matter what, no matter what your station is in life, there’s a chance that you’re going to make it out okay. If you’re born into poverty, if you’re born into affluence, it doesn’t matter because we all kind of start with same set of tools, brain, body and we all develop more or less in the same way. And then it’s up to us to do whatever we can with what we’re given. Once we’ve jumped over those first few hurdles of our formative early childhood. You’re going to cry.