The first and second parts of the film are lyrical depictions of life in the 1930s, showcasing various scenes: mothers in a maternity ward, babies in strollers, children playing in a circle, schoolchildren at their desks, a young pianist beside her teacher, students in a dance studio, women working in fields, in factories, skydiving, and harvesting grapes.
The final section of the film juxtaposes newsreel footage of the Spanish Civil War with scenes of Soviet training flights, highlighting the contrast between the struggles abroad and the achievements of women in the USSR.
Film scholars, analyzing early drafts of Dziga Vertov’s screenplay written between 1935 and 1936, concluded that the director's initial concept was significantly different from the final version.
One detailed review emerged during the Khrushchev Thaw: N. P. Abramov, author of the 1962 book Dziga Vertov, noted that the avant-garde director's film served as a polemical response to D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance.
Roshal suggested that by 1937, Vertov had reached the creative limits of producing large-scale, survey-style depictions of national life, which might explain the director's dissatisfaction with the film.
[7] Alexander Deryabin, examining various versions of Vertov's screenplay, concluded that during the production of Lullaby, the director attempted to break away from conventional documentary norms and "aestheticize the tragic, which defies human comprehension.
"[3] Oleg Kovalev compared the poetics of Lullaby to some cinematic techniques employed by Leni Riefenstahl, stating that Vertov's film is "capable of inspiring admiration both for its aesthetic form and the consistency with which its bold concept is developed on screen.