Imagine watching – closely - millions of sperm invading an egg, that egg dividing into cells, then morphing into a fleshy blob with fingers and eventually toes and hands and eyes and ears, and seeing fetuses in utero doing everything regular babies do. Then you get to watch dozens and dozens of women giving birth. This is the point at which I elected to draw the shades. There’s nothing quite like glancing at the apartment across the street and watching your neighbor enjoying an endless, slow motion parade of birth scenes.
How amazing and utterly horrific it is watching women give birth. Maybe it’s because I’ve never witnessed it in person, but I’m glad I’ve braced myself for the real thing because I’d surely be having a heart attack in that situation wondering if that entire process is normal. For such a natural, beautiful, miraculous process, why is it so godawful to watch? Apologies and well wishes to Tina, Sara, J, and anyone else who is anticipating motherhood at some point. Jenny, hats off.
Then you see these little blobs grasp fingers and smile and move around, then hitch and crawl along, then toddle. And so on and so on, all the way through the entire lifecycle. There are sections devoted to love, sex, violence, speech, action, death, and dreaming, and it’s all underscored by a brain-melting soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead.
The movie is along the lines of the Qatsi Trilogy by Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass in that it’ll be riveting for some and sheer torture for others. Personally, it wore me out so much that I slept better than I had in weeks. Is that a recommendation? I'm not really sure.
