New Year Baby (2007)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Don't Believe the Hype

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I accidentally discovered this documentary film when I looked at the listings of the morning paper which had it in the summary column of the show "Independent Lens" hosted by Terrence Howard. The director, Socheata Poeuv, traces her family's roots from when she was born in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge and finds out quite a lot about her parents' heritage that had been kept from her for so long. Like that her much older two sisters were actually cousins adopted by her mom, that her not much older brother was born to her mother by a previous husband who died, and that her mother and father's marriage was arranged. But while her parents weren't in love with each other, the father was a good listener which the mother highly tolerated. Also, the father-Nin-was a hero just by going back and forth from Cambodia to the current home town of Dallas, Texas, in getting the various family members together. Parts of the film were illustrated by animated sequences representing various memories of the family as well as Socheata's nightmares of what the Khmer Rouge members looked like. Very touching as well as occasionally funny scenes abound. So with all that said, I highly recommend New Year Baby (Ms. Poeuv was born on Cambodia New Year).

This film is touching, thoughtful and revealing on multiple levels. Levels perhaps even the producer's did not expect or intend to submerge themselves in.On a micro-level the narrators journey into the history of her family and her people is one that many in Asian-American (perhaps all communities) communities at some point in their lives wish to venture into with their families and rarely get to glimpse. Pain of war, death, suffering, dehumanization, politics, immigration, separation, change, forgiveness and renewal. Throughout the film her family becomes more and more open and surprisingly candid with their feelings, a rare gift.On a macro level this film peers into the deep shame and pain a country and humanity can inflict on itself, it peels away layers of the false justifications we can create in the name of idealism, race, class or any other category we might use to degrade or lessen one another. It reveals like other historical tragedies and genocidal incidents that our capability of joining a death machine is much easier and simpler than we think. It reveals the "banality of evil" as Hannah Arendt called it.It is heroic in that it shows there are ways to find forgiveness within ourselves, to move on and to continue the ceremonies of our lives even if in war we must skip them for the meanwhile. It is heroic in that it shows a depth of love that a privileged society like ours has lost touch with. It is heroic that it was made in the face of surmounting pain and suffering that too many, indeed perhaps in generation or more may forever remain unforgivable.I would hope there would be a follow up or a continuance of the dialogue and testimony this type of film might spark within the human race....and more importantly in the short term for Cambodians themselves.