Born into Brothels (Movie Review)

The notion of a "happy childhood" is a relatively new phenomenon. Post World War II, in fact. I've not done the pile of research necessary to confirm this hypothesis, but I suspect photography played a crucial role in refashioning adolesence.

I developed a fascination for photojournalism when I was 11 or 12, flipping through a photography book purchased for $1 from a clearance bin at the nearest bookstore (25 miles from home). I was fascinated by the photographs, gripped by the images of children huddled into coal mines. Images of kids lining up in front of machines, the cogs and wheels of the Industrial Revolution. Their cold, grease-stained stares served as a stark contrast to everything I knew about childhood. I felt a certain sadness for what I suspected was a painful existence, and found solace only in thinking that, perhaps, the 100 years that had since passed brought improved conditions for the generations that followed (though I knew even then that everything is relative, and just as the kids in those photographs certainly laughed and played from time to time, I too had my own quiet miseries).

Watch a documentary like Born into Brothels, and you realize the exploitation is constant. That just because you don't necessarily see it when you round street corners, there exists a certain brutality we too often ignore.

Which isn't to say it doesn't exist, every day, to some degree on every street. It's just that our suffering is... different.

I'm glad I watched Brothels, though I was surprised by how incredibly short it really was. I want somehow to glance into the future and see just what becomes of these children, and suspect a sequel may be in the works 10 years down the line.

Either way, the film is proof enough that a well-crafted photograph (the angle, the light, the lens, the paper) sometimes speaks more than any treatise. Makes me wonder if perhaps the camera is mightier than the pen...