A new film cap­tures the inti­mate dra­ma of pregnancy

“I can’t quite fath­om the fact that every­body, every­body, who is here was born – that some­body had them through this process, because it’s so dra­mat­ic. I can’t believe that this dra­ma is so com­mon – the most com­mon one there is. Uni­ver­sal, basically.”

Devo­rah Baum’s descrip­tion of birth 45 min­utes into her film The New Man encap­su­lates what we’ve seen up until now. We’re lis­ten­ing to a woman who’s been euphor­ic with joy and ragged with despair at var­i­ous points in her preg­nan­cy. The film holds the res­o­nance of these moods by build­ing a world out of domes­tic detail. Phone calls, hos­pi­tal vis­its, meals with friends, changes in brain chem­istry form the real­i­ty so often spun on its axis.

The New Man works because, not in spite of, its low-key pitch. Cinema’s most revered con­tri­bu­tions to the canon of preg­nan­cy films fix­ate on the poten­tial for body hor­ror. Think of Mia Far­row scream­ing of her dev­il child, ​“What have you done to its eyes?!” in Rosemary’s Baby, Isabelle Adjani con­vuls­ing in a Berlin under­pass in Pos­ses­sion, and even the unholy inter­rup­tion in John Hurt’s chest in Alien. By con­trast, Baum and Josh Appignanesi’s doc­u­men­tary about hav­ing a child togeth­er explores the qui­eter and thus real­is­ti­cal­ly dev­as­tat­ing dra­ma of bring­ing life into the world.

It’s clear from the open­ing sequence of a rum­pled Josh sit­ting on a bus that van­i­ty – and to an extent pri­va­cy – has been sac­ri­ficed to the cause of show­ing the upheaval of peo­ple becom­ing par­ents. As indi­vid­u­als and as a cou­ple Josh and Devo­rah are the clay tak­ing on the impres­sion of a new human. For most of the film’s 75-minute run­time, the babies (because they’re twins!) don’t exist beyond their mother’s bel­ly, and the leit­mo­tif of an ampli­fied heart­beat, so the nar­ra­tive stakes are dug deep into the adult man and woman.

This film gains poignan­cy from par­al­lels drawn between its cen­tral adults and help­less chil­dren. Before the preg­nan­cy time­line evolves, Josh plays footage from his wed­ding to Devo­rah, end­ing on an extract from her speech that goes: ​“And so love in its essen­tial unmas­ter­abil­i­ty is very expos­ing for peo­ple with pre­ten­sions. When we’re alone in each other’s com­pa­ny it’s some­times hard to dif­fer­en­ti­ate Josh and myself from babies…”

They are like babies in their open­ness towards each oth­er and the cam­era. Devo­rah has a face that shows feel­ing like sud­den light shows colour. Life as an aca­d­e­m­ic has shaped her mind and this inter­play between an intel­lec­tu­al self and a self enslaved by emo­tion makes her a won­der­ful sub­ject. Scenes in which she is a pri­mal being, full of tears and screams, are fol­lowed by scenes in which she acute­ly sum­maris­es her sit­u­a­tion, then laughs with infec­tious gaiety.

Josh’s love for his wife infus­es the film. His cam­era bears wit­ness to inti­mate expres­sions of exis­ten­tial doubt, as well as tears of phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al pain. By way of an equal and oppo­site reac­tion, she lets him in. To those of us who like to retreat when vul­ner­a­ble, her will­ing­ness to be doc­u­ment­ed is semi-mirac­u­lous. Key con­ver­sa­tions are recon­struct­ed but sin­cer­i­ty remains the fuel, from the open­ing IVF treat­ments, through to falling preg­nant, then the good news, the bad news, Devorah’s petite body bal­loon­ing, then birth and final­ly parenthood.

When not focus­ing on Devo­rah, Josh con­ducts per­son­al soul-search­ing, ques­tion­ing every­thing from his own father, to what it means to be a dad (i.e. preg­nant but not phys­i­cal­ly so) to the val­ue of mak­ing this film at this time. He sur­veys friends who are par­ents, seek­ing coun­sel and wis­dom with­in the warm com­mu­ni­ty that the cou­ple have built for themselves.

Answers are nowhere to be found in this para­dox­i­cal doc­u­men­tary. The New Man demys­ti­fies par­ent­hood by show­ing two open-heart­ed peo­ple going through and describ­ing the process. It also bows before the mys­ter­ies of par­ent­hood by show­ing that no absolute prepa­ra­tions can be made in the face of bio­log­i­cal luck.

The New Man screens nation­wide on Tues­day 24 Jan­u­ary as part of Picturehouse’s Dis­cov­er Tues­day pro­gramme. To find out where the film is show­ing near you or to watch online vis­it the​new​man​movie​.com