The Story of the Weeping Camel [DVD] [2017]

A couple of positive reviews kindled a desire to try this little film out. After it became apparent that it wasn't going to appear too soon in any local rental establishment, I took the plunge and ordered the disk. This turns out to have been one of my very best DVD acquisitions - and if you get a copy, you'll be delighted to own it, too.My wife was reading when I first put it on: this was actually my strategy to avoid getting blamed if, on telling her to watch it, it turned out as obscure or inaccessible as it might at first sound. She did actually ask what I was going to watch as I loaded it."Er, it's a little film about some Mongolian herders in the Gobi Desert and their camels, Dear..." I offered sheepishly (and not inappropriately)."...right..." she hemmed, returning to her book. The film started.As the credits rolled some time later, I turned from my riveted position facing the TV. My wife was staring wide-eyed at the screen, a huge smile on her face, moisture in her eyes."That was absolutely fantastic!" she exclaimed.It is. Far more beautiful than any of your over-hyped Crouching Dragons, or whatever - deliriously so, in fact, and all the more exquisite for being so real. Simple and exotic at the same time, The Weeping Camel establishes how utterly alien we all are and, at the same time, how very, very similar.It begins with astonishing, eyeball-searing landscape and lifestyle shots that look like Luke Skywalker's home planet, with creatures from Hoth imported from the sequel (were they Bantus?). The desert looks and sounds bleak, wild, glowing and glorious. Its inhabitants (and their clothes, their habitat, their food, their songs) are both ordinary and inexpressibly glamorous.Not too many minutes in, though, and you realise that this family is just like us; only more in tune with the humans and animals with whom they cohabit. Although the central tragi-comedy is that of the abandoned calf, the story is very much about how the people live and where they might go (the young lads are campaigning for a television when they aren't crossing the desert to fetch batteries and a violinist) - and, ultimately, about the poetic, magical, musical treatment the family finds for its ailing fellow-creatures. The depiction of the forsaken calf's plight is as poignant as the very best of Disney (and actually far less manipulative). The resolution: well, you need to see and hear it for yourselves. You won't regret it.It really is a gorgeous piece of work. And what a nice technical surprise for us, too. Having treated ourselves to digital widescreen and fab surround-sound in the Christmas aftermath, we were busy going through the spectacular back-catalogue (Gladiator, Star Wars, West Side Story and others) to "justify" the home cinema spend. Guess what! It's the Weeping Camel that makes the best sense of giving cinematic craftsmanship maximum domestic reproduction: the pictures - of a landscape with little intrinsic variation - are endlessly gorgeous. The soundscape is just awesome: the unending wind, the interior acoustics, the cries of the animals, Odgoo's (the mother's) song to her sleep-creaky daughter, the music (including violin-strings played, Aeolian Harp-style, by the wind through a beast's fur) - utterly brilliant. Inside the tent with the family, the recording is so true that the dogs and goats sounded as if they were outside the room in which we were watching (itself also swept by that constant, fluting, roaring, raucous wind).Everything you see and hear, everything that happens - you wonder (and rejoice) at how such artists were there with perfectly-placed cameras and mikes to help us look, listen and share. Such a simple little film, such stupendous cinema!You've probably gathered that I can't recommend this highly enough.

One of the best. Extraordinary, utterly absorbing, and true. Strongly recommended.

This amazing film takes us to the edges of Mongolia's Gobi desert, where an extended family of four generations pasture sheep, goats, and camels. One female camel fails to bond with her new child, thus giving cause for a ritual to take place that results in the camel weeping and then suckling its calf.Drama or documentary? Well, a bit of both, but mostly the latter. Working with real herders in their real homes and with their real animals, the film does not hide its attempts to create a drama: it is clear that some of the stilted dialogue between family members has been rehearsed, and when the great-grandfather tells the children the story of how the camel was given one attribute each from all the twelve animals of the zodiac, one child complains that they already know that story and asks could great-grandfather not tell another instead.The film is also of interest for showing how the modern world is intruding into the traditional nomadic lifestyles of the herders: thus we see four-by-fours, electricity, TV, motorbikes, even western-style school uniforms appearing on the fringes of the Gobi desert. There's a clock on the wall of one of the yurts, and Aerial washing-powder available in the shop of the nearest town.But the greatest interest - and mystery - surrounds the Hoos ritual itself, powerfully making manifest the animalistic power of music. Assuming it to be genuine, how does the laying of the instrument over the camel's hump - resulting in a resonance caused by either the wind or the animal's own breathing - allied with the subsequent playing of the instrument accompanied by singing affect the camel-mother so deeply as to completely transform her attitude to her calf?Powerful stuff, but alas there are no extras on this DVD to provide any answers. All that we are given is a photo gallery and fifteen minutes of unnarrated and unstructured behind-the scenes footage.

This beautifully filmed documentary centres on the lives and work of camel herders in the Gobi Desert of Southern Mongolia. This is interwoven with the story of one of their camels who, after takink a traumatic two days to give birth to her colt, then rejects him, and follows how the family struggles to remedy the situation.The production team avoid turning the film into an intrusive patronising film, and show how the two young sons can travel miles to seek out a relative who might be able to help the camel and in doing so are introduced to tv and computer games that become "must haves" for them. Somehow the family seem to totally disregard having the camera around.The film was recommended to us and I pass on my recommendation

Watch this if:If you like nature documentaries.If you like those interesting programmes about the life of children in other countries.If you want to be gently entertained by a film with no killing, war, fighting or any other kind of violence. No swearing, shouting, dramatic confrontations or seeing people in high octane emotive states. No sex scenes, or any love story whether unrequited or fulfilled. No action heroes, car or other chases.If you want to see if it is possible to make a modern film with absolutely no special effects or stunts.If you want to see a wonderfully enchanting and compelling film about a part of our lives we seem to have left behind long ago, much to our detriment.