Babies

Nope, this is not a personal blog post (although I am expecting again). Babies is a 2010 French documentary, detailing the lives of four children from birth to about one year of age. The babies are Ponijao from Namibia, Hattie from San Francisco, Mari from Tokyo, and Bayar from Mongolia.

I'd been wanting to see this for some time, ever since I saw it advertised in the theater. Never, before I had a child of my own, would I have wanted to see such a documentary, but something about the previews just reminded me of my own son and, therefore, touched my heartstrings. But that was the preview.

The documentary itself did not impress me much. It is rather slow. There's no narration or even subtitles, and when there is English (San Francisco), you couldn't care less what the people are saying (almost wish they weren't saying anything). But that's not to say the filmmakers aren't trying to make a point of some sort. It's not always obvious. I'm not sure they are saying one way of raising children is necessarily better than another, but they are obviously comparing for some reason. Maybe they're just saying there's no one right way.

What bothered me most about the film was actually the parenting, particularly in San Francisco and Mongolia. In San Francisco, the dad takes Mattie to a parent/child class where they chant something bordering on worship to Mother Earth. At another point, when Mattie purposefully slaps her mother across the cheek twice in a row, her mother simply smiles at her with an "Oh, Mattie," like that's going to tell the child she was wrong.

Mongolia was worse, at least for the well-being of the child. Although the parents of these four kids aren't the main show, they are almost nonexistent in the Mongolia parts, which is odd since the family lives in a remote home in the middle of a huge plateau with a bunch of cattle for neighbors. Shots of the Mongolian baby mostly show him either alone or with his abusive toddler brother. In one shot, the brother alternates hitting the baby across the face with a scarf and looking directly at the camera, as if to say, "Are you going to stop me? No? Fine, look what I can get away with." His little baby brother cries as the scarf hits him. In another shot, the toddler pushes his baby brother in the stroller a little ways away from the house to where the cattle are and leaves him out there as he returns to the house. The toddler treats their pet cat even worse, and certain scenes indicate that the younger baby will follow in his brother's footsteps.

The most different culture is Namibia, Africa. The natives live in mud huts surrounded by drought conditions, constantly covered in dirt. The women are naked above the waist. While surprising at first, the nudity is less and less disturbing as the movie progresses. It's a very cultural thing, not in the least sensual. The documentary is rated PG for this cultural and maternal nudity, also in some of the other countries' parts to a much lesser extent. What's most disturbing about the Africa scenes is the dirt and grime and flies. These people seem like they're from an era long past, the way they live completely off the land and seem to be extensions of the land itself. They sit in the dirt. Their babies crawl in the dirt, putting their faces in it and lifting rocks and old, bleached bones to taste, as any baby would with his surroundings. The difference for our culture is that dirt is outside and we can control what our children get into. This scene of the baby putting a dirty bone in its mouth is followed by a scene of one of the San Francisco parents vacuuming cat hair off the carpet and then using a lint roller on the baby. Again, I don't think the movie was commenting that one way was better than another, just comparing. In Namibia, if the baby pooped, the mom wiped its bottom on her knee and then cleaned her knee with an old corn cob. I thought that was quite smart actually. You wouldn't want to wipe the baby's bottom with the rough cob. To clean the baby's face, the Namibian mother licked it and then spit away the dirt.

You'd think that Namibia is the worst of these four places for a baby to be raised, and certainly, in some ways, it is. But the mothers were always there in the picture, sitting and talking near their babies, even if their babies happened to be in the dirt. In Mongolia, perhaps the baby was slightly cleaner, but the mom was nowhere to be seen. I appreciated the community evident in Namibia, and the baby was obviously happy.

I don't have much to say about the Japanese baby and her family. They seemed the most normal and well-adjusted. Both parents seemed to interact in equal amounts with the baby.

My inclination is to say that I did not enjoy this documentary, though parts of it were very interesting, particularly the different ways these cultures took basic care of their children. I give it two and a half out of five stars.

Mao's Last Dancer on DVD (with notes on Gulliver and Jack Sparrow)

I've seen several movies recently, but two of them hardly seemed worth reviewing. I will mention them here, although my main purpose for this post will be to write of the third.

Gulliver's Travels
First, Gulliver's Travels just came out on DVD. It's rated PG, but the Lutheran school my husband teaches writing at didn't think it was appropriate for sixth graders. Although there's nothing huge wrong with it, I agree with that assessment, having seen it myself. Some of the humor is crude (straight out of the book, from what my husband tells me), and it's just not quite the thing a church school should be showing to young, impressionable sixth grade minds. Now, if it's something these kids see at home with their parents, or something you might show your kids, that's another matter. But here's my suggestion: don't bother with it. It's not that funny, despite being Jack Black. It's actually kind of boring. Maybe you just have to be with the right crowd, watching at a semi-late hour of the evening, I don't know. I didn't get it. Maybe you have to have read the book.


Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Second, I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides in the theater the other day. If you like the Pirates movies and you like Captain Jack Sparrow, which I do, it's enjoyable enough. But again, I couldn't muster up enough enthusiasm to review it on its own. People seem to disagree with me here, but I miss Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan. I appreciated the characters of the missionary and the mermaid in this fourth Pirates movie to provide the missing balance, but at the end, I was disappointed even in that. It seemed to me that the missionary traded in his faith in God for faith in love, a very Hollywood-like idea but, obviously, disappointing to a true believer in God. Nick saw it a little differently, that the missionary's faith was renewed by love, but even he admits that perhaps that was wishful thinking. Good popcorn movie, but don't expect to be wowed.


Mao's Last Dancer
Finally, tonight I saw a movie I wanted to review. You've probably never heard of Mao's Last Dancer. I hadn't, but frankly, a preview of this movie on the disc for Black Swan was the one good thing I got out of that waste of time. Mao's Last Dancer is rated PG and is clean, linked only to Black Swan by the ballet, I guess. If you enjoy true dramas and beautiful, heartfelt dancing, you should definitely see this fascinating movie that passed under the radar just last year.

Li grows up in communist China under Chairman Mao's rule, the sixth son of a peasant, selected out of his small village school to train as a ballet dancer for China. He overcomes his small build and weakness to prove himself good enough to represent China in the United States. But the United States is not the picture he was painted in China, and he will have to make choices and sacrifices to pursue what he loves.

I suspected that this true story, based on Li's own autobiography, would be sad, and parts were, but it was amazingly, beautifully happy at its end. Though I know real life isn't always so neatly packaged (and perhaps some artistic license was taken to make this movie so), I am so much more satisfied and happy with a good ending, especially if a character struggled to get there. If this sort of story interests you at all, don't pass up the opportunity to see Mao's Last Dancer. It's a decent family movie, if you like to expose your children to other cultures and if they can sit through drama. The B-word and S-word are used briefly, and there is a short discussion on sex when two characters are kissing. It comes off as humorous since the Chinese boy doesn't understand the girl, but for those who are very selective in movie watching, you would want to at least be careful of which children see it.

Of those three, Mao's Last Dancer is the one to see, and it's the cultured, elegant pick, if you ask me.