One Big Question

Rating: 5/10 (4 February 2007)

Okay there's a big spoiler coming so if you don't want to know what happens stop right here.
I just have one question for the brilliant but sometimes muddled artists who made this movie: Why didn't Kee nurse the baby? What mother, no matter how unschooled in mothering, wouldn't put the baby to her breast? Wouldn't the earth-mother gypsy lady have told her to do that? Wouldn't Theo, who had a child of his own 20 years ago, have told her to do that? First of all, nursing would have quieted the baby's cries. Second of all, without nourishment that baby would have been very sick--or even dead--from dehydration and lack of nourishment well before the story ended. Third of all, the mother's breasts would have been so painful from the pressure of the milk--I think it's called engorgement--that she would have been screaming herself. To me, this highlights the problem with the movie, which is the victory of concept and idea over actual living moments. Which is not to say I won't keep going to see every movie Alfonso Cuaron ever directs.
But just tell me, Alfonso: did it not once cross your mind to have her nurse the baby?