Babies

Earlier this week, I went to my first movie, post-Luke. You'd think that after having spent the past 12 months constantly looking at a baby, I'd have had my fill, but what movie did I go to? Babies.

If you haven't heard about this movie, it's a kind-of documentary that follows four babies from four different countries around for their first year of life. To be perfectly honest, I expected the movie to be kind of boring. I mean, there's very little dialogue, what with the main characters being non-verbal and all and how interesting could it be to spend 90 minutes looking at short clips of strange babies? Turns out: very.

There are so many child-rearing conventions that are taken for granted: don't let your kids eat rocks because they will choke to death. Don't leave your baby alone near water because babies can drown in as little as an inch of standing water. Don't leash your baby to the bed because (a) they could strangle on the rope and (b) they might start believing themselves to be a dog and then, they'd start licking themselves in rude places and how are you going to explain that to the family?

But as it happens, all of these rules are cultural, as shown by the genius (seriously, genius) editing of this movie. It was funny (not necessarily ha-ha funny) to see the differences between the concerns of the parents in the two developed countries versus in the developing countries. It was funny (ha-ha funny) to see all four of the babies acting like...well...babies, regardless of whether they were wearing a loin cloth or a designer onesie. All in all, it was a great choice of a first movie AND it made me appreciate my baby all the more when I got back home.