Babies

Thomas Balmes' Babies is a full length Documentary from France on four different babies belonging to different parts of the world. It is a novel attempt to document the birth of the babies who are born in different clime and atmosphere. The concept of the movie is the brain child of Alain Chabat, also the producer of the film, and was adopted by the director Thomas Balmes appreciatively to engender the thought-baby. The documentary opens with two African babies sitting in the mud and playing with stone and clay. There starts a tussle between them over grabbing an empty plastic can and one of the babies begins beating the other. The camera moves down memory lane showing the bulged stomach of an African mother daubing the mineral an calcite rich mud on her belly. The child is Ponijao, a male child, from Namibia. The chosen mother belongs to a particular tribe that lives on the forest plains of Namibia. The women do not wear any cloth to cover the upper torso and child is fed with their bare breasts. The setting is rustic and embraces nature harmoniously. The father of the child is not even shown whereas the Japanese and the American patriarchs contribute much to the accompaniment with the baby. On the other hand the Mongolian child's father does only a patriarchal cameo.

The next child is Mari from Japan, the only other female child chosen among the four, and a completely contrasting surrounding nurtures her. The couple of the child lives in a cosy apartment and Mari is brought up in gadget filled house. The next one is the Mongolian baby Bayar, born in the community of cattle-tenders occupying a vast plain of between glade and savannah. They live in decorated and beautifully pitched tents and not unknown to the modern equipment viz. satellite television. This baby boy grows amidst cattle and a naughty elder brother, who in one frame drags a quiet cat through the bedroom and puts it close to the baby. On other occasion he beats the baby boy till the later cries out. The fourth one of the babies hails from the richest of nations, the US. She is Hattie and leads as sophisticated a life as Mari. The documentary starts with the birth of the babies and ends at the first of the year of them tracking down their growth for a whole year or until the crawlers become toddlers. In the end the babies are shown in their fourth or fifth year. The documentary does not offer any narration or commentary on the setting and backdrop of the babies. Notwithstanding, it traces the psychological features that go with the gaining of knowledge from the environment. A wonderful study carried out with earnestness and disinterestedness.