Babies

I took Miles to see Babies with me yesterday (yes, breaking my no TV rule just once). It seems kind of ridiculous to critique a movie like Babies, but it didn't live up to my expectations. I thought it was mediocre.

The babies were cute, no doubt. But the movie seemed confused, incoherent, and at times baffling. It seemed like the director didn't really understand his subjects and wasn't sure what exactly he wanted to show. The culture? We saw two Namibian moms blowing horns of some sort, and in another scene the Namibian mom was calling into the dusk, but I'm not sure why we saw these things. Was it a social critique of modern life? We saw Hattie the American baby and Mari the Japanese baby both enduring musical classes they did not seem to enjoy.

At other points I questioned why they included totally pointless and boring moments, of all the thousands of hours of footage they must have had. Why do we see Mari riding in an elevator with her mom, or the very long shot of her being wheeled through a toy store with no expression on her face? Why do we see Bayar the Mongolian baby sitting in the back of a truck?

I've captured so many great moments in only four months with one baby, I just don't understand why the movie wasn't more about the babies and not wide shots of the (beautiful, certainly) landscapes. When the movie did do that, it had some great moments. Mari having a temper tantrum was hilarious and adorable. Ponijao dancing was awesome. All the babies interacting with animals was fun to see. Even the smaller moments, like Ponijao falling asleep sitting up, or Hattie lying in bed with mom as a newborn, were wonderful... these are the little moments that make life with a baby so fascinating. Oddly, a lot of the outtakes were better than some of what was included in the movie. I felt like the director got distracted and veered off into tangents too much, and that's where he lost me.

Essentially I feel the movie was billed as a straight documentary, but the director let his point of view creep in - a point of view that urban people overparent and that there is virtue to a more natural, back-to-nature parenting style. That could be an interesting movie too, but which is it? Cute footage of babies growing up or sociological study? I think he should have committed fully to one or the other, because what I saw was a bit of a muddle.

As far as my baby goes, he did well. I think he found it pretty interesting for the first ten minutes or so, but then he started to fidget, and I was up and down, rocking and bouncing him, letting him stand up on my lap, talking in his ear. It was nice that only a few other people where there so I could walk around in the aisle without disturbing anyone. I even managed to nurse toward the end of the film.