Pregnant in America is a documentary that strives in the right heart but falls into documentary clichés and misses its mark.
Steve Buonagurio wants to document the sometimes overbearing conditions women have to deal with to give birth in America. A noble cause but unfortunately poor timing sets this documentary back. It comes right on the heels of Ricki Lake's "Business of Being Born" which had both a better budget and was first to make a documentary on the topic. The experts in this one such as Ina May Gaskin, Dr. Marsden Wagner and Michael Odent were all in "Business of Being Born" and have only downgraded their speeches for this version. A lot look slightly bewildered and slightly tired, like they just finished talking to Ricki and now have 'some other dude' who wants them to say something different than they just said.
He falls into what I call Michael Moore-isms, where a filmmaker will abruptly and without much need to, turn the camera on themselves. In this case it was Steve working with the mother of a woman who died in labor from the improper of Cytotec. It's pointless and awkward and ends up being little more than the two of them in a parking lot trying to harass Doctors and others as they arrive for work and, to no shock or awe, they fail to change the entire established medical community in five-minutes-or-less.
The last bit of the film deal with the birth of Steve's own daughter, who ends up having very minor respiratory problems after birth with the necessary dramatic-license thrown in of the ambulance race to the hospital and lots of shots of her on a warmer getting an IV. Of course in the end there's no diagnosis and it ended up really being nothing at all. Perhaps it was put in as an attempt to endear him to women who've had real tragedies in labor as it mainstreams him as someone who's experienced 'both sides' (one expert even says so) instead of a man who had a perfect birth and thus cannot comment on the medical side he never experienced.
Overall I feel that this film, and even the superior "Business of Being Born" fail to hit marks that women (or couples) care about. They try to educate on the greed of OB/GYNs and the wonder of birth in third worlds but there's little real converse. American women don't care that a midwife is called a 'Light Mother' in Norway or that a woman in Kenya went back to work in the fields after birthing but this film mostly centers on the mystical wonder of midwives which makes them seem like the stereotypes that are the exact thing they're supposedly fighting against.
Steve Buonagurio wants to document the sometimes overbearing conditions women have to deal with to give birth in America. A noble cause but unfortunately poor timing sets this documentary back. It comes right on the heels of Ricki Lake's "Business of Being Born" which had both a better budget and was first to make a documentary on the topic. The experts in this one such as Ina May Gaskin, Dr. Marsden Wagner and Michael Odent were all in "Business of Being Born" and have only downgraded their speeches for this version. A lot look slightly bewildered and slightly tired, like they just finished talking to Ricki and now have 'some other dude' who wants them to say something different than they just said.
He falls into what I call Michael Moore-isms, where a filmmaker will abruptly and without much need to, turn the camera on themselves. In this case it was Steve working with the mother of a woman who died in labor from the improper of Cytotec. It's pointless and awkward and ends up being little more than the two of them in a parking lot trying to harass Doctors and others as they arrive for work and, to no shock or awe, they fail to change the entire established medical community in five-minutes-or-less.
The last bit of the film deal with the birth of Steve's own daughter, who ends up having very minor respiratory problems after birth with the necessary dramatic-license thrown in of the ambulance race to the hospital and lots of shots of her on a warmer getting an IV. Of course in the end there's no diagnosis and it ended up really being nothing at all. Perhaps it was put in as an attempt to endear him to women who've had real tragedies in labor as it mainstreams him as someone who's experienced 'both sides' (one expert even says so) instead of a man who had a perfect birth and thus cannot comment on the medical side he never experienced.
Overall I feel that this film, and even the superior "Business of Being Born" fail to hit marks that women (or couples) care about. They try to educate on the greed of OB/GYNs and the wonder of birth in third worlds but there's little real converse. American women don't care that a midwife is called a 'Light Mother' in Norway or that a woman in Kenya went back to work in the fields after birthing but this film mostly centers on the mystical wonder of midwives which makes them seem like the stereotypes that are the exact thing they're supposedly fighting against.
