BORN INTO BROTHELS: CALCUTTA’S RED LIGHT KIDS / Zana Briski & Ross Kauffman (2004)

January 21st, 2005 by Scott Marks

Born Into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids (2004)
Directed by: Zana Briski, Ross Kauffman
Written by: Zana Briski, Ross Kauffman
Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1
Genres: Documentary

Rating:

Another windowboxed, grainy, hand-held documentary on an emotionally burdensome topic.

We open with cumulus-sized close-ups of a child’s eyes intercut with long shots of poverty and famine. Why not just throw bricks? Is it really that hard to make a well-intentioned film about children void of sentiment?

We follow the lives of several children of prostitutes trapped by fate in Calcutta’s red light district. The goal of the film is to document their hell in hopes of making their lives better. Where does one draw the line between enlightenment and exploitation? It’s one thing to document the plight of third world children being forced into prostitution. It’s another to choose brutal images that, at the expense of the film’s narrative, may have been prevented.

There are a couple of scenes where mothers call children “f***ing c****” and, in one case, beat up on a boy. Put the camera down and do something to stop this abuse. I know this breaks the first rule of documentary cinematography, but what about the laws of humanity, something this film definitely wishes to hammer home.

The filmmakers hope to liberate these children by giving them still cameras in order to allow them artistic expression. After about the third or fourth on-screen portfolio it became what Pauline Kael called a “coffee table movie.” The majority of quality photos by the children on display are happy accidents. The most praised picture of the bunch has a child’s hand in the center that was not intentionally placed there. Is this really teaching children how to “see” or is this just a distraction to help get them through their lives (in addition to giving Briske and Kauffman a chance to produce a film)?

What’s ironic is that the children’s images are a hell of a lot more aesthetically competent than the cinematography. Briske is a still photographer who knows nothing about cinema and it shows in virtually every frame. Strictly shoot-now-and-figure-it-out-later filmmaking. Formally, this is no better or worse than Jackass: The Movie. Of course the message is an important one, but were it transformed into a literary essay loaded with grammatical errors would she still court the critic’s favor? Call me cynical, but this film raised more questions about the misapplication of cinema and sentiment than answers to the children’s dilemma.