A Review of Babies, The Movie

Pregnancy Place Radio - A Review of Babies, The Movie: by Erica Matteson

Whoo-hoo BABIES! I have been waiting to see this movie for months. Watching the trailer, becoming a fan on FaceBook and waiting until I could by a ticket. When Jennifer the owner for Milagros offered a prescreening pass for Thursday night I was quick to change my plans and said I would take it!

The movie opened with two young kids from Namibia grinding grain. It was interesting how universal the way they figured out who was going to play with the plastic water bottle between them.
One reached for it, the other didn’t want him to have it and took it. This first reacted with a bite and pulled at the second. The second pushed back and being bigger won the disagreement. The first bent down and cried in the dust of the grain that he was working on before it all started. This film catches the sweet looks on each baby as they work it out and it did workout without injury.

Throughout the movie as it follows four babies from Namibia, Mongolia, Tokyo and San Francisco and tries to capture the daily lives and milestones of each baby from birth to one year.

The closer a family lived to the land the less rules there appeared to be. Take the above disagreement, the children worked it out on their own but were carefully watched by the village members. I saw how integrated their trust towards each other became. Did these early disagreements bring them closer together?

The older children held the babies as they slept, carried them and handed them off to another. It was the only “village culture” of raising children throughout the movie. There was guidance offered by each member of the village and the baby was never left alone.

The film left me with the impression that the family from Mongolia left the children alone for long periods of time. There were many shots where the older brother brought the baby to tears. It just shows that sibling antagonism is worldwide. I wonder how their relationship is now?

I found these two cultures to be considerable different than ours. There was a lack of “stuff.” It encouraged me to look at what do we really need when our babies come home. Do babies need plastic toys and classes that teach about music and time honored stories? Can our children in the United States grow up with less and be happy? How can we get a bit closer to the land and brake some of the rules?

What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear how you bring “slowness” to your life. Do you reach for the education that can only come with getting your hands dirty?

This movie is a gem! It gives you not only a nice hour and twenty minutes of pure baby bliss it gives you food for thought. Can we look at the other cultures and find pieces that we can sprinkle into our lives to give it color and flavor that we might other wise never see?

Lets talk about it! :)

Erica

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