{"id":27903,"date":"2013-04-07T05:41:31","date_gmt":"2013-04-07T13:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=27903"},"modified":"2013-04-07T18:23:17","modified_gmt":"2013-04-08T02:23:17","slug":"babies-thomas-balmes-2010-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=27903","title":{"rendered":"Babies (Thomas Balm\u00e8s, 2010): France"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Lau<\/a>ren Sousa<\/a>. Viewed on DVD.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The first film from the Lumi\u00e8re brothers was a documentary, La Sortie de l\u2019Usine Lumi\u00e8re \u00e0 Lyon\u00a0<\/i>(1895). Less than a minute long, it\u2019s exactly as the title describes it (in English, The Exit from the Lumi\u00e8re Factory in Lyon). More recently, audiences have been treated to such films as Bag It!<\/i> and Super Size Me<\/i>, films that record reality, but with a clear opinion: these films have an agenda in a way that those early Lumi\u00e8re films refreshingly lack.<\/p>\n

Thomas Balm\u00e8s documentary Babies <\/i>has created a similarly real film. About twenty minutes are spent documenting the lives of four babies from different parts of the world: San Fransisco, Namibia, Mongolia, and Japan. There is no overt commentary and only sporadic music; parents speak various languages, but never directly to the camera, and no attempts are made at subtitles or translation, Babies <\/i>offers viewers cin\u00e9ma verit\u00e9 at its finest.<\/p>\n

Of course, despite the film\u2019s loveliness, there is no thesis except for the obvious one: babies, regardless of where they grow up, do the same things. They do, but very little parallel editing is employed. Each of the babies is cared for by their parents, plays with toys or not, and interacts with animals and their environments. Like a filmic rendition of one of Raina Matar\u2019s photo-essays on children and their bedrooms but for babies, the film features no introduction of the parents, and their faces are rarely shown. Some snippets of dialog are heard in the four languages of the various babies\u2019 parents, but no subtitles are offered; it really is simply about looking at babies and seeing a world as they might.<\/p>\n

This is key to the movie\u2019s appeal; the camera is specifically on the babies, at their eye level, rather than the eye level of their adult caregivers.<\/p>\n

It certainly sounds like a shallow concept, and none of the Lumi\u00e8re brothers films\u2019 were more than a minute long. Director Thomas Balm\u00e8s wisely keeps his running time short as well; the film clocks in at 79\u00a0minutes, ending with a Skype update from each of the featured children, who, presumably after post-production is completed, are happily functioning children. This isn\u2019t to say that the concept wears thin; it doesn\u2019t, and in a world where one could watch millions of two-minute Youtube videos of other babies, this well-produced and extended peek into four specific lives is a welcome example of a long-form documentary that doesn\u2019t need more than its fascinating subject matter to thrive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Lauren Sousa. Viewed on DVD. The first film from the Lumi\u00e8re brothers was a documentary, La Sortie de l\u2019Usine Lumi\u00e8re \u00e0 Lyon\u00a0(1895). Less than a minute long, it\u2019s exactly as the title describes it (in English, The Exit from the Lumi\u00e8re Factory in Lyon). More recently, audiences have been treated to such films […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2218,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dvd","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}