A Dog Cave at Vast Remove From Dogsville
Added 7/28/2009
Yes, the reference is to the aspirations of entirely different genres. So be prepared for a national geographic excursion into nomad's land, stripped of arty pretension, and where the drama of the mundane carries the narrative. A simple tale, perhaps of the disappearance of such a lifestyle, and told with brilliant candour. Sure, there's a touristic sense of voyeurism into the lives of another culture, but the writing has no impulse to delve into the psychological or sexual dominions. The closeups of the kids, especially, warm this viewer's heart. The film is every bit the equal to its predecessor, the very similarily constructed,'The Weeping Camel'.
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Inimitable
Added 12/7/2008
This extraordinary movie is surely something inimitable, never to be repeated. To appreciate it fully, one needs the DVD, for the interview with the director, a Mongolian woman who studied film making in Germany. The movie is partly documentary insofar as the actors are, not professional actors, but people playing themselves in a simple plot. You can choose either Spanish or English captions for the Mongolian dialog. Unfortunately, the interview in German has captions only in English.
I have not noticed that other customer reviews mentioned the music, and somebody should. It is very good, whether typically Mongolian or not, making the movie many times more enjoyable and even more meaningful.
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Simple and beautiful.
Added 9/21/2008
"The Cave of the Yellow Dog" is amazing in its simplicity and beauty. It's a perfect example of Neo-Realism, such as even Vittorio de Sica never achieved: director Byambasuren Davaa persuaded an actual nomadic Mongolian family, the Batchuluuns, to star in the film, which essentially was improvised from the details of their daily lives. The basic story is very simple: whether the father of Nansai, the eldest daughter and protagonist, will allow her to keep Zochor (Mongolian for "Spot"), the little dog she finds in a cave. Nansai and Zochor, as Hitchcock might tell you, are the McGuffins; the real story is how the Batchuluuns live in a yurt on the treeless steppes of western Mongolia, tending their sheep, and moving as the weather and the availability of grass and water dictate. Davaa lovingly records the details of the Batchuluuns' life, as they ride shaggy ponies to lead the flocks to grass (Mr. Batchuluun has a motorcycle when he needs to get somewhere in a hurry) and gather dried dung for fires to smoke the meat they need to survive.
Aided greatly by the magnificent camerawork of photographer Daniel Schoenauer--who is equally effective in recording the endless, ever-changing skies above Mongolia and the exquisitely colorful fabrics that decorate the interior of the Batchuluuns' yurt--Davaa presents a quietly compelling portrait of a dying way of life. Nansai spends most of the year in school in Ulan Bator, coming home only for summer vacations, and her little sister and brother will soon follow. Her parents talk about how they might be forced someday to move to the city and get jobs there. Meanwhile, Davaa captures exquisite moments in the Batchuluuns' life. When baby brother plays with the family's porcelain figure of Buddha, his sister upbraids him: "You can't play with God!" As Davaa says in a German-language interview that's an extra on this disc, you can't script a moment like that.
While this in many ways is an ideal film for the whole family, I fear that its slow pace would bore many children, though they certainly would identify with Nansai, the scrapes she gets into, and her love for her family and her little dog. The real audience for "Cave of the Yellow Dog" is for contemplative adults who appreciate pictorial beauty, an exotic and endangered way of life, and the universal appeal of a family whose members love and support each other. The final image of the Batchuluuns moving their herd to new pastures, as a truck drives by blaring a reminder to vote in the next election, is one you won't soon forget.
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A Love Story
Added 8/29/2008
A Love Story, you say? What? But to me, that is what this is. A simple story of a child's love for a dog, a mother and father's love for their children, and a dog's love for a little girl. All set in the steppes of Mongolia, where the nomadic life of a family who live off the land seems a dream to me. And the little brother in this movie may very well be the cutest child I've ever seen on screen; indeed all the children are winsome and refreshingly NOT brats. See it if you love a simple family story; safe for children to see and great for adults, too.
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A Western Mongolian Family With No Script...
Added 7/29/2008
Picturesque and unbridled, THE CAVE OF THE YELLOW DOG is Mongolian in the extreme. More of a stream of consciousness in terms of style, The Cave of the Yellow Dog's director, Byambasuren Davaa, gives us her second feature length film that has the look and feel of a wayward docudrama but gives us a story that materializes by happenstance (her first being the well-done The Story of the Weeping Camel).
Watching the extra features on the DVD gives one the insights you'll need to understand Ms. Davaa's style of filming. No script. No actors. Just real people doing real lines ...for the most part. The only "story" that weaves its way in is that of the yellow dog and his cave, revealed by an old crone who lives near our Mongolian family's current location.
The family is the Batchuluun family, a husband, wife, a mischievous (and very young) son, a young daughter, and another daughter -- the eldest -- Nansal. It is Nansal who we get to know best as she returns from school in "the city" to her family's nomadic grounds in mountainous western Mongolia. The panoramic shots of the surrounding countryside are achingly beautiful, with fiery sunsets, Grand Canyon-sized valleys, and hillocks of grazing lands mixed with flowering blooms. The topography is often more interesting than the story itself, which meanders hither and thither; from children playing ...to working the farm to finding a not-yellow dog in a nearby cave.
The puppy that Nansal finds is the culmination of what should have been the film's central point. Her obsession over the dog and befriending it causes a rift between Nansal and her father, who doesn't want the dog to attract prowling packs of wolves to their homestead and their goat herd. Nansal loses interest in everything but the pup, even going so far as to not pay attention to the family herd and, eventually, to lose sight of her young brother whom she's supposed to be keeping an eye on. When Nansal stumbles upon an old lady living in a distant yurt, she learns the story of what can happen when someone finds a dog in a cave (although the old lady's story-dog was yellow and Nansal's is black and white ...and named Spot.) ... I won't say anymore, though, for fear of giving away what could be considered the "plot."
Getting back to the extra features...
Director Davaa all but admits that they really had no plan on what to film, just taking it day-by-day and letting the story unfold as it may. So what became an actual plot developed by accident, which I find a bit irritating and refreshing. What if the plot hadn't developed and all we'd gotten were glimpses into the life of a western Mongolian family? I can't help but think that this would've been disastrous for the film. But, thankfully, the story DID come through and we get something unique and pretty darned original.
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