[Editor's Note: For more reviews of the summer's biggest movies, check out the Daily Loaf Movie Review Index.]
It’s difficult to imagine a world without context, but that’s life for a baby. A newborn is thrust into a world that it will spend decades trying to understand, and promptly gets to work grabbing, sniffing and cramming into its mouth everything it comes into contact with. The new documentary Babies is concerned only with this opening period of a human’s life, from birth through the first steps. In narrowing the focus, the filmmakers also completely ignore every standard storytelling device; there is no narration, no plot, and no attempt to explain who the parents are aside from their location and what we can observe. As a result, the experience of watching Babies is a little bit like being one yourself, and it’s the best thing about the movie.
This article appears in May 5-11, 2010.