I sat down to watch a few minutes of it, with every intention of going out, and I got totally hooked. This movie follows the early development of four babies from around the world: Namibia, Mongolia, Japan, and San Francisco. While the movie has its sweet cuddly baby moments, its more just extremely entertaining and interesting. The movie has no dialogue, only music, and features only the babies. Literally, an occasional hand or boob will enter the shot, but it's essentially all about babies going about their baby business. About 20 minutes in, I kind of forgot that they were babies, and it felt like I was just watching really silly adults do their daily chores.
Like dangling upside down for a spell.
Or tending to the livestock.
Of course, it brings up some really interesting questions about parenting and childcare. You can see that the American mother is highly attentive to the comforting of her child, surrounding the baby with cushy things, going to mommy and me yoga classes. And then immediately after that, there's a scene where the Namibian mother shaves her baby's head with a knife. The Namibian baby is often seen rolling around in the dirt, gnawing on old bones, and lying belly down in the stream lapping up water. Similarly, there is one scene where the Mongolian baby is taking a bath and a big-horned mountain goat walks up to the window and starts lapping up the bath water- the baby hardly notices (fyi, I can't imagine a quicker way to have a heart attack that to be approached by a goat while in the shower).
It makes me wonder: how do we safely raise hearty and resilient children in this world? And how do you stimulate a babies natural curiosity and baby intellect without interfering too much with the process?
Something to ponder on my 10 mile run tomorrow.
<3
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