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With our constant, subconscious desire to find reflections of ourselves, we adults perceive babies the way we do animals: If an infant, puppy or duck-billed platypus displays even a hint of grown-up behavior or a mature personality, it’s terribly cute and funny. Thus, the laughs and “awwws” come steady and strong in “Babies,” a fly-on-the-wall nature documentary that just happens to be about expressive miniature humans, and holds tight to the theme of our close relation to, and interactions with, members of other species.
Based on an idea by Alain Chabot and directed by Thomas Balmes, this concise and well-observed picture charts the first year of life for four babies: Ponijao of Namibia, Bayar of Mongolia, Mari of Tokyo and Hattie of San Francisco. Each child’s respective experience is further removed from nature, yet each takes in the world in similar ways, and each curiously crosses paths with the pawed and the feathered — be the setting the wilderness, a zoo or a town house. More than anything else, the film deftly and gently explores our collective animalism.
And it does not exploit. With no voice-over narration, intermittent benign music and minimal dialogue, what we’re essentially left with is a camera that simply wants to watch — and so do we, as these babies do the darnedest things. Comedians whose movies have recently tanked might be crushed to find how much raw comic firepower lies in a plain shot of Hattie letting out hiccups, or in a scene where Mari falls to pieces after failing to master her stacking rings. Priceless stuff.
Occasionally, the babies look square into the camera, which they of course have no reason to shy away from. Usually, though, they just gaze inquisitively at the adults in the film, whose quirks and varying methods of rearing are regarded with near-equal fascination. The babies seem to be thinking, “Who are you weird and wild creatures?,” not knowing that, soon enough, they’ll be grown-up animals themselves, with weird behaviors and wild personalities of their own.
Babies
PG
Three reels out of four
In area theaters tomorrow
Edge of Darkness
R
Available Tuesday
Mel Gibson makes a ferocious comeback in “Edge of Darkness,” a Boston-set revenge thriller adapted from a BBC TV series and directed by Martin Campbell (“GoldenEye”).
Gritty, intelligent and surprisingly uncompromising, the film proves a fine performance vehicle for its controversial leading man, whose recent off-screen antics are eclipsed by his seasoned, undiminished acting chops. Ray Winstone and Danny Huston co-star.
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