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SHE’S A CUTIE: Nansaa, that is — and we haven’t even got to the dog. |
At Munich film school, Byambasuren Davaa had a light-bulb idea for her graduate-thesis film, one that would lead to an Oscar nomination. She would journey to her native Mongolia in the spring, when domesticated camels were scheduled to give birth. Once there, she and co-director Luigi Falconi auditioned Mongolians owning pregnant camels until they located a family, the Ikhbayars, who functioned winningly before the camera. At the same time, the directors stumbled upon an awesome true-life happening. The Ikhbayar family camel rejected its newborn colt, refusing to allow it to suckle. Pathos! The poor howling, suffering infant — until, on camera, the savage-beast mom was exposed to Asian blues plucked on an ancient string instrument. A screen miracle occurred: the mother camel, soothed, actually started to sob! And to feed her child! The Story of the Weeping Camel.
Don’t mess with miracles. Davaa tries for another one with The Cave of the Yellow Dog (opening Friday at the Kendall Square). She arrived again from Germany, this time solo, to dramatize another tale culled from daily Mongol life. As with Weeping Camel, she searched out a native family, the Batchuluun clan, who were comfortable with filming, and she uncovered an endearing protagonist, Nansaa, the elementary-school-age daughter. Nansaa is plucky, funny, willful, incredibly bright, and also cute as a button, with cherry-red cheeks and porcelain skin. She rides a pony with cowgirl skill, but she’s also a serious student, absorbed at night with homework in her family yat.
So far, quite good. Davaa films in the verdant valley where she once lived, and the schooling of little Nansaa provides a keen autobiographical element based on the filmmaker’s own pursuit of formal education. In interviews, Davaa has explained that she rejects as soft the Western idea that change in the lives of native people is always for the worse. She explores how it’s possible for Mongolians to live comfortably with some technology. Nansaa’s mother uses a sewing machine, her father rides a motorbike, and there’s no compromise to either’s cultural identity.
The Cave of the Yellow Dog is at its best when it’s most anthropological, when it takes its Buddhist time in observing Nansaa’s mom making cheese, or in watching as the Batchuluun family dismantle their yat piece by piece to head off on the nomadic life. The latter is a scene remarkably similar to the building of the Inuit igloo in Nanook of the North (1922), Robert Flaherty’s classic documentary, which so clearly influences Davaa’s vision. But shouldn’t there be a story? There isn’t much drama with the easy-going Batchuluuns, so Davaa imposes a narrative. She sends Nansaa to find a puppy in a cave. Nansaa’s father wants to get rid of it because it was probably raised by wolves. This impasse gets resolved bad-Hollywood fashion, with a missing baby and a valiant dog, and the documentary, unlike the weeping-camel story, turns distressingly phony. Is it picky to say that Davaa should have cast a more ominous-looking dog? This tail-wagging cutie has never ever heeded the call of the wild.
I once did a phoner with Jack Palance, who died last week at 88, and he barely acknowledged my questions, or my compliment to his gunslinger villain in Shane, because he was distracted watching football on TV. What about Contempt, one of my 10 favorite films, where he plays a philistine producer who runs off with Brigitte Bardot? Palance loathed the movie. “What was the name of the French guy who directed it?” he asked me of Jean-Luc Godard. “That guy was such an ass!”
