Babies, Blu-ray (2010)

by | Sep 27, 2010 | DVD & Blu-ray Video Reviews | 0 comments

Babies, Blu-ray (2010)

Director: Thomas Balmes
Studio: Focus Films/Universal62112181 [9/28/10]
Video: 1.85:1 for 16:9 1080p HD color
Audio: English DTS-HD MAster Audio 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH
Extras: The Babies – Three years later, “Everybody Loves…Your Babies” Sweepstakes Winners, BD Live 2.0, PocketBlu
Length: 1 hr. 19 min.
Rating: *****

Thomas Balmes is a French director of nonfiction films. Among his past work are Maharajah Burger (holy cows in India), The Gospel According to the Papuans (about a Papua Chief’s conversion to Christianity) and Damages (a law firm specializing in personal injury cases). He’s also done filmic bios of James Ivory and Michelangelo Antonioni.

Babies has no plot or even dialog to speak of aside from typical baby sounds.  It looks at one year in the life of four babies in four entirely different corners of the world: Namibia, Mongolia, Tokyo and San Francisco. Balmes obviously had to have a similar patience and devotion of a typical wildlife photographer, since much of the time the babies were sleeping or doing nothing worth looking at. He never talked to the babies and when they began to be aware of the camera he stopped filming, though there is footage in the extras of the babies three years later, and they look at the camera a lot then. One of them who seemed rather the ugly duckling and not very happy is now a cute smiling little girl.

Only one birth is shown. Balmes wanted audiences to find their own message in the film. One he says he learned is that you don’t have to keep babies occupied all the time – it’s good for them to be alone and bored sometimes. Some viewers might be disturbed by the Mongolian baby crawling around among the cows or the Namibian baby putting everything he finds on the ground into his mouth. Balmes also focused on a San Francisco family that really pulled out all the stops in child-raising, including child yoga classes. Some of the animal/baby encounters are hilarious, such as the goat sticking his head in the window to lap up the water in the baby’s bath.

The cinematography is very skilled, and one feels a part of the exotic scene in Namibia and Mongolia. The Mongolian family actually has very nice furnishings in their yurt and seem to be middle-class nomads. The film appears shot on HD video – I can’t imagine the huge amount of wasted 35mm footage that would occur with such a project. Some viewers may feel the film has no point at all, while others will find it terribly profound. One inescapable message is that it shows how much alike we all are as babies. Even if you just treat it as looking at really cute footage – such as the funny animal videos on YouTube – you’ll find Babies captivating.

 — John Sunier

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