Salon.com, December 2005
by Andrew O'Hehir
"Little Man.": From nightmare to miracle, and back again When Nicole Conn, director of the groundbreaking lesbian-themed feature "Claire of the Moon", and her longtime partner Gwendolyn Baba, a high-powered gay-rights activist, decided to use a surrogate mother to give birth to their second child (Baba had borne the first), Conn saw an opportunity for a film. She had no idea. Their surrogate, a woman named Mary who is scarcely present in this film, had misled Conn and Baba about her medical history; as one doctor observes, she was about the last person you'd want to carry your child. The result was a teeny and very sick baby boy named Nicholas, born 100 days premature and weighing less than one pound, who had about a 99 percent chance of dying before his first birthday.
"Little Man" is Nicholas' story, at least on its most obvious level. But it's also much more than a made-for-TLC tale of medical marvels, motherly love and the power of prayer (although all of those play a role). It's also a ruthlessly honest self-examination, as well as a cross-section of a relationship nearly torn apart and a world of overwhelming technology where it becomes possible to save the lives of tiny newborns who wouldn't last 10 minutes on their own, but the underlying moral questions are never answered.
This tiny, wrinkled creature, who more closely resembles a newly hatched baby bird than a human being, does indeed cling to life ferociously despite any number of close calls with death. Any parent who sees this film (any parent who can bear to), will readily forgive both Conn, who spends every waking instant in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and is willing to try anything to keep her baby boy alive, and Baba, who stays home with their daughter and braces herself for what she expects will be the inevitable outcome.
On one hand, this is a profoundly moving and inspirational story: Nicholas spends more than five months in the NICU and comes out alive, finally able to eat and breathe on his own and approaching an acceptable newborn weight. On the other hand, "Little Man" makes clear that this comes with tremendous costs, psychological, social and indeed financial. Nicholas is faced with significant lifelong disabilities and chronic illnesses, and his round-the-clock care almost destroys Conn and Baba's relationship. When you see this spunky little character smile, or try on his first pair of glasses, you have no doubt that saving his life was worthwhile. But as Conn is brave enough to ask, how do we know where to draw the line between medicine and mercy, between playing God and accepting fate?
From a filmmaking point of view, "Little Man" is also a striking accomplishment. In addition to compiling and editing some 200 hours of footage of Nicholas' early life, Conn went back and interviewed the doctors and nurses involved in his care (who unanimously admit they were trying to prepare her for his death), and then sat down with Baba on camera to discuss their memories of the drawn-out trauma. If the film occasionally feels too full of Californian self-regard -- and not quite aware that Nicholas got a chance sick preemies wouldn't get in most places in the world -- it's nonetheless a marvelously compressed and immaculately constructed work. Or so I soberly concluded after I was finished sobbing.
