Babies

BABIES!!!  who doesn’t love babies?  Obviously everyone loves babies.  So pretty smart move focusing on just babies and nothing else.   Thomas Balmes takes us to four different countries to follow the first year of four incredibly cute babies Bayar, Hattie, Mari, and Ponijao.  Bayar is the only boy of the bunch.  There are a few interesting things to note about babies through this study, 1) that although the babies are really small, can’t talk to really gesture, you can see how different their personalities are, and you can actually like (or like not as much) one baby over another.  and yes, I compared, and yes, I came out with favorites; 2) how much the babies adopted what they saw around them as things they would do themselves; and 3) how similar and how different each one of them was based on their environment.  Nothing ground-breakingly new, but still is interesting to view these development of the brand new humans first hand, in an accelerated journey through their first year of life.

I also found myself worried over the safety of some of the babies, but they all turned out fine!  When Bayar looked like he was about to get crushed by a horse‘s hoof, the horse evaded him and he crawled through the horses legs, happy as a plum.

This is a movie focuses on the adorable-ness of the protagonists, but in the context of  the lush scenary and beautiful backgrounds of Bayanchandmani, Mongolia (Bayar), Opuwa, Namibia (Ponijao), San Francisco, US (Hattie), and Japan, Tokyo (Mari).  Best of all, this is currently available on streaming at netflix, if you have a subscription.  An enjoyable film with minimal dialog but plenty of ooh-ing and ahhh-ing…$8

If you heart Babies:

Recommendations from …:

Mad Hot Ballroom
Hero (visually beautiful)
March of the Penguins