Born Into Brothels - DVD Review

Wow, that looks like a bummer. Next to escapism like The Amityville Horror or The Interpreter, I can completely understand that reaction to Born Into Brothels. It was mine for a while. So, the first thing to emphasize about Born Into Brothels is it's not as depressing as you think. You might get a little misty-eyed but you won't be brutally depressed for 90 minutes. The most striking thing about BIB is that, while it's set in such a dark world, it's far more uplifting than depressing. Zana Briski believes firmly in the every drop in the bucket counts mentality and by showing you the drops she directly influenced, maybe the ripple effect can begin.

What is hope? Is it something simple, born within, or does it take external work and influence? Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman's brilliant, Oscar-winning documentary, makes an ireffutable case that hope, the kind that changes lives, requires a lot of ingredients. It takes focus, concern, friendship, and, above all, courage to say - I'm going to leave the only world that society has told me that I should ever know, and find another. Born Into Brothels, besides being an amazing "you think you had a bad day" dose of perspective, is a riveting dissection of hope and, how even worlds away. we all have the same basic, human desire to succeed.

Some have criticized the film for being more about Briski than about the children she documents. Of course it is. In many ways, every documentary is centrally about the doumentarian. Fahrenheit 9/11 tells us a lot more about Michael Moore than anything else. Um, Super Size Who? Even someone as seemingly detached as Ken Burns only documents things that interest him, like baseball or jazz. Zana Briski is the central subject of Born Into Brothels. It is about what she does and any argument that it should be more about the kids is missing the point. If Briski had created a detached, uninvolved look at these children without much of a future and kept herself out of the picture, we'd be marveling at her lack of concern. She created Born Into Brothels as much about her involvement with the children of the red light district of Calcutta as the kids themselves. Briski felt moved to do something for these children who have nothing and, by the end of Born Into Brothels, you may be too.

With the great DVD from ThinkFilms, the film itself is only the beginning. First and foremost, check out "Reconnection," a look at the children of the film three years later. I'm not going to spoil anything but, at least for now, it looks like Briski's infusion of hope may have taken. It truly makes you hope that they catch up with these kids every three years. Maybe this could be the new "Up" series, following the same children born into nothing, trying to achieve. The movie is given a host of other extras, including a commentary by the director and a fascinating video commentary, of the subjects of the film watching the documentary. It's an impressive DVD from a small studio, a sign that they know this is going to be a part of their collection that's admired for years to come.

Basically, the world is far more class-segregated than people want to admit. We often idealize a world where every good, smart kid can pull themselves up by their boot straps and go out and make it big. That's rare. More often, no matter how hard they try, children are forced into the class they're born in. They need someone to reach down and give them a helping hand up the ladder, more than just a dream. They need one of the hardest human commodities to really come by - hope. And not just the idea of it, but the actual belief that you could be on the road to a dream fufilled. See? In the end, Born Into Brothels isn't depressing at all.