Babies

Rating: 6.7/10

Film Class: C

Genre: Documentary

An almost silent documentary on 4 babies of different origins; African, Japanese, Mongolian and American. The film takes you on a journey with them through their first year in life. Filming was highly commendable, there were some really memorable moments which I could only assume that the film team was able to put on screen owing to their long hard hours of filming.

The irritating part of this documentary is how quickly and how often they switch screen times among the 4 babies... even before I could begin to sink into the moment, the moment has already moved on without me. And the "boring" part of this documentary is about how silent it was. Not recommended to catch it after a long day at work, but preferably when you're all psyched up about life or about being a parent.

The best bits of the documentary? *spoilers ahead* The African baby in total. I could watch him all day, and even if 80% of the screentime was dedicated to him, one would never be bored. Possibly because of the culture, and the environment that he lives in which makes it so interesting. Of course, I won't demerit the Mongolian baby in this aspect as she too lived in a "different world" with domesticated cattle. It would almost seem that the documentary was trying to drive across one important point... that the speed of development is dependent on the degree of civilisation. It seemed as though the African baby developed faster than all the rest because of the harshness of the enviroment he was brought up in.

As for the Japanese baby and the American baby, nothing too interesting about them... since possibly the "life of babies" that I know is simply being reiterated to me as I too am living in a developing yet somewhat developed city. Still there were a couple of astounding moments such as the Japanese baby being brought to a zoo by his mum and the American baby spitting out her banana and swallowing it back in again. It might sound disgusting, but the idea behind it is truly a classic one. We have lost the ability to "understand" what we are putting into our mouth and we just take it for granted. Anything that tastes nice, we pop them into our mouth... anything that tastes awful we spit them out and will never give them a 2nd look.

Despite the slow pacing and the almost hypnotising soundtrack of the movie, it was an eye-opening experience for me. Ranks alongside the other award-winning documentaries such as the Cove and Food Inc.