May 5: Babies

I just read an article in the most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly about the upcoming documentary, Babies. The piece made me remember sitting in the dark theatre months ago when I saw the trailer. The preview begins with two infant brothers from Africa sitting next to each other playing with piles of rocks. One reaches for a nearby empty plastic bottle and is instantly pushed away by the other. In response, the first baby bites the naked shoulder of his brother who proceeds to jerk the biter by his neck before going back to his rock leaving the biter with his head buried in his hands while crying. All one shot and with no music.

The trailer goes on to explain the premise of the film: four babies from four different parts of the globe (Bayanchandmani, Mongolia; Tokyo, Japan; Opuwo, Namibia; and San Francisco) are filmed for one year. Sufjan Stevens' The Perpetual Self or "What Would Saul Alinsky do?" plays as the kids play with animals, CDs, and bouncing chairs. The babies gaily flail their arms and legs on tables, dance, swim, cry, and giggle. As the music's tempo picks up and the infants are nurtured, carried, fed, and bathed, the audience can't help but laugh with the toothless kids before a great finish to the trailer with one of the kids sitting in a basin with a goat lapping the water.

According to the article, the film has no dialogue save for a few background voices. It's a film that is eighty minutes long and shows the simplicity of being young and how uniquely kids in different cultures are raised. There is a quote from the little boy from Mongolia who is now four-years-old and after watching the movie that he stars in, he says, "This is a film about me, the sky, and how my big brother has been beating me up." Precious!

I don't know if this movie is going to be any good and I don't know if it will be able to keep my attention for 80 minutes. Normally I'm not a baby person at all. People go crazy for babies. I don't. Period. I am, however, really excited to see this film. Not since Young at Heart has a trailer sparked so much emotion from me, so I hope it lives up to the hype.