Susan Clarke
This film follows several families through breastfeeding trial and error. It's not very well done and I don't think Dana Ben-Ari spent a lot of time looking for people for her film who were vested in the cause of breastfeeding and normalizing it. A few of the fathers/partners in the film were so non supportive and discouraging of their ladies to nurse their young and miss out on that very important source of vital nutrition was disheartening. I was disappointed in this film a lot because I felt like this was a subject that needed to be covered, but it was done poorly. Some of the interviews with experts in the film are top notch and I give the movie a thumbs up for that but the movie lacked a great deal with doing much in the way of normalizing breastfeeding. Way to go by showing unsupportive fathers and moms who just gave up with no real support to encourage them to stick it out. Sorry. This movie kind of sucks! I'm disappointed Ricki Lake got behind this and put her name on it. It makes me lose a little respect for her.
Clara McBean
Let me start this off by stating that I am a huge breastfeeding advocate and I nursed my own child into toddlerhood. This film is very disappointing for several reasons. It dragged on for way too long. Dana Ben-Ari is clearly new to filmmaking and needs to learn how to trim the fat. When your audience is comprised of breastfeeding advocates and we all start yawning during the screening (yes, this happened at the Santa Monica screening of the film!) and then look around to see that everyone else is yawning too, it doesn't speak well for your art. A few of the interviews with the experts were good. There were a few cook bed sharing nursing families in the film. But there was way too much "this is still taboo" and playing that card up a lot that it doesn't help to normalize breastfeeding. This is not a film that advocates breastfeeding. Only one of the women followed through the film nursed her child til the first year. Everyone else stopped at 3 or 6 months and the fathers were generally not very supportive either. This is not what my personal experience was in the world of breastfeeding. The Milky Way is an amazing movie that does a MUCH better job. Dana Ben-Ari, find a new hobby.
Steve Pulaski
Dana Ben-Ari's Breastmilk plays like the most recent effort in the mumblecore subgenre of film, focusing on long, intimate conversations with a diverse group of people, predominately women, but often times their significant others, and frequent uses of an amateur approach to show the film's low budget. This aesthetic won't be too burdensome for most people, but the effect leaves me personally wishing I had watched a film about the issues of breastfeeding children done with a realistic, fictional narrative by the likes of somebody like Joe Swanberg or the brothers Duplass.The problem with a documentary about breastfeeding is the topic is too thin to adequately sustain a ninety-one minute film, especially when you almost completely ignore the big social issue at hand here, which is should breastfeeding be allowed in public? Week after week, I see the Breastmilk Facebook page light up with links to articles concerning women who have been kicked out of public places because they were publicly breastfeeding; did director Dana Ben-Ari forget to include a segment on that and thought linking numerous different articles on Facebook would make up for it? It's bizarre to see a film about breastfeeding spend five minutes talking about the pornographic fetish of lactation and include multiple montages of breastmilk being squirted out of a woman's nipple, but completely ignore the core issue that has been plaguing this method of nursing a baby for decades now and seriously needs some sort of a voice.Breastmilk follows numerous different couples, specifically the female in the relationship, and their issues, views, and methods on breastfeeding and the often challenging but rewarding process that it is. It weaves in and out between couples, and even gets some lactation doctors and consultants to chime in on their views. Often times, the film plays like a talky, contemplative film of the mumblecore subgenre discussing not only breastfeeding but gender roles and the woman's essential role in bringing up a child. A health worker named Patrece Griffith-Murray even brings up a fantastic point in the early part of the film, stating, "every woman has a reason why they breastfeed," and Ben-Ari succeeds by not making the film statistical and overly-analytical, but personal and using specific case examples.The two most dominant women in my life - my mother and my seventy-five-year-old grandmother, whom I call every day - both bottle-fed their children. At the time I was born, my mother was working grueling, twelve-hour days in the trauma unit of Loyola Hospital, with little time to get a break or have lunch, let alone pump her breasts and assure the milk got to me via my father. Not to mention, my mother was diagnosed with toxemia, and also is known to be a very anxious soul, which disrupts the process of breastfeeding. The same reason, combined with added personal stress, was the same reason my grandmother didn't breastfeed her three children either. Breastmilk thankfully recognizes the issue that breastfeeding is a very challenging and trying thing, which not every woman can handle or can do as easy as others. As trivial of a comment as this may seem, it does a great job of not belittling those who raised their children on something like Oberweis milk (speaking now).But at the end of it all, the biggest problem with Breastmilk is it becomes too long-winded for its own good; this is an HBO short documentary with a maximum running length of fifty minutes that was stretched out to a tiresome and dreary ninety-one minutes. On top of that, the film neglects the biggest point about its topic and has its structural process become grating because of the lack of new or enlightening information on its subject. Still, however, the things Breastmilk does correctly, from its personal approach to its lack of statistical bombardment and its respect for women who go the bottle-feeding route, make it the marginally enjoyable film that it is.Directed by: Dana Ben-Ari.
