Salina Art Center

Babies-or Bébé(s), the original French title-is based on such a surefire attention-getting subject that it’s amazing it doesn’t get used more frequently (or effectively).  This simple, almost elemental documentary from director Thomas Balmes is about babies-the most natural, honest, expressive, and emotionally generous performers in the world.  One could be cynical: how could any film following one formative year in the life of a quartet of infants from different parts of the world (Africa, Japan, Mongolia, and the United States) be anything less than adorable?  It’s almost too easy.  Babies are legendary scene-stealers in movies; they draw the viewer’s attention effortlessly, easily winning our sympathy while making the Method Acting performances of trained actors seem forced and mechanical.  Babies could have settled for just filming infants (who grow into toddlers) and letting them be cute; audiences would be sufficiently charmed and diverted for 90 minutes.  But Balmes is intrigued by culture as well as biology: he’s selected four far-flung locations in which to observe how children grow up, learn, play, adapt, and develop the rudimentary skills that they’ll need to become adults (socially and physically) in their particular world.  Babies doesn’t preach the gospel of multiculturalism, urging viewers to ignore skin color and native dress to realize that “human beings are the same the world over.”  That’s a trite, unnecessary theme, and it’s readily apparent: despite the differences in upbringing, social customs, traditions, and particularly material prosperity, it’s obvious that babies can and will adapt.  Anyone who’s spent a lot of money on fancy, “brain-stimulating” toys for infants already knows that the babies are usually just as pleased playing with the cardboard box the toy came in.  Babies don’t know they live in the Third World or a bustling urban metropolis like Tokyo or San Francisco.  Balmes and producer Alain Chabat don’t force the idea; the film has no dialogue or subtitles; no tricky, manipulative editing; and just a low-key, unobtrusive musical score (rest assured there are no painfully punning tunes on the soundtrack like “Baby, I Love Your Way” or “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”).  Matt Zoller Seitz, reviewer for Salon, called the film’s style a “lo-fi aesthetic” that consciously eschews the “Ed Sullivan-style plate spinning razzle dazzle” of most current documentaries. Filmmakers often say that the subject is more important than the filmmaker, but in the case of Babies, that’s not just lip service: here, the babies are front and center, acting naturally-they’re the perfect documentary subject because they really don’t “play to the camera.”  They’re not always cute.  Babies in less developed countries can be just as fussy and demanding as their more privileged counterparts.  The filmmakers allow audiences to detect for themselves the subtle ways in which babies from different parts of the world seem to share the same primal responses; the unspoken question is: how much of human behavior is hard-wired by nature and how much is trained by nurture?  The film doesn’t cast judgments on the child-rearing techniques of any country or culture-everyone does it differently.  Summer blockbusters are typically stuffed with costumed superheroes battling evil with martial arts, lasers, guns, and grenades.  Babies heralds a simpler heroism: the heroism of human resilience, the intense struggle to grow, to learn, to become independent-which we all forget by the time we’re adults, but can appreciate anew with the assistance of life-affirming films like Babies.