For the Love of Children

We must begin higher up; we must watch the infant in its mother's arms; we must see the first images which the external world casts upon the dark mirror of his mind; the first occurrences which he witnesses; we must hear the first words which awaken the sleeping power of thought, and stand by his earliest efforts, if we would understand the prejudices, the habits, and the passions which rule his life. The entire man is, so to speak, to be seen in the cradle of the child.

~Alexis de Tocqueville

Trailer.

When I was born, I had white hair. It was odd, my mother told me, because I have such a youthful spirit. It was as if I began my life backwards. And I was quiet - so quiet that when I was in the womb, my mother thought I was a boy. My elder sister had kicked and squirmed. Then, as I'm told, when I was only a few months old, I went on a four-day nursing strike which my father says were the worst days of his life. Ah, youth.

In April Johnston's world, those early years are a blank. Abandoned in a dustbin (a trashcan for American readers) on the day of her birth, April was passed around from foster homes to child care centers after her adoptive mother's suicide. She does not know what she was like as a child; all she has is multi-colored box with mementos from her past. A few worn-out paper dolls, a comb, a postcard. But she's now settled in the home of her former teacher, the loving Marion Bean. For most of the year, April can handle the pain and disappointment; she can pretend to be normal.

But her birthday is another matter. On that day, she is consumed with the knowledge that she was alone and unloved when she entered the world. Where most children celebrate their existence, April is tormented by the loneliness and neglect she's faced her whole life. And this birthday is even harder than others because at 14 years old, April is getting impatient with the unknown. Already weighed down by broodings over her childhood, she gets wildly upset over the earrings Marion got her instead of a mobile phone, storms out towards school, and then plays truant, wandering about town for the course of the film.

Based on Jacqueline Wilson's novel of the same name, the touching BBC film Dustbin Baby follows April's (Dakota Blue Richards, The Secret of Moonacre) pilgrimage to the haunting spots of her youth in an attempt to cope with her past. At each spot April visits, she experiences a flashback from her history - nearly all of them quite painful. But April's trek is not petty revenge upon Marion (a stellar Juliet Stevenson, Truly, Madly, Deeply). On the contrary, April is searching for something - though it's not till the very end of the film that we see the need which has been driving April on.

In this sense, Dustbin Baby does away with stereotypes of what matters to children and what happens to them when they live troubled. April doesn't take drugs, smoke, or move through boyfriends at the speed of lightning. Her pain is not so easy to distinguish; it is a less flashy but more realistic internal isolation of the spirit. At the same time, the film rejects the Hollywood idea that what children need is to be permitted to do and have whatever they wish. Elliot, Marion's friend, constantly tells her that young people need to "play truant" every now and then and have cell phones. But by the end, we see that such ephemeral concerns were not on April's mind. That's not what children want or need most, not really.

In addition, the film follows Marion's frantic search for her foster child. Like the Biblical woman who turned her house upside down to find a missing coin, Marion pulls every string imaginable to track down young April. And the story is so skillfully structured that observant viewers will see that April's loneliness can only be undone back where it all began. Only by inverting her former situation can April break out of her isolation.

Though the beginning and middle of the film are filled with suffering, made even more painful by the fact that it involves a child, Dustbin Baby has a beautiful ending (at least, it made me cry), plenty of good themes and structure, and vivid characters to boot. Espousing a love for children, strong families, and attentive parenting, Dustbin Baby is exactly the type of modern critique I recommend.