August 10, 2005

• WEDNESDAY MOVIE(S)
  

  The Story of the Weeping Camel
  March of the Penguins

  
  

  I forget if this happens every year, but it seems like the multiplexes have been filled lately with pretty much kid’s fare. Maybe it’s because it’s the last month of summer before school starts and they’re all getting restless and bored. Soon they’ll be complaining about the weather changing and no long, hot hours to sit around in the backyard pool or in front of their TVs, or (on my street) endlessly riding up and down on skateboards. But in the meantime, it’s August and in spite of the arm-and-a-leg prices for snacks that their parents pay anyway they’re at the movies. I’d heard of The Story of the Weeping Camel somewhere and checked it out from the library to bring along on my birthday trip to the beach with my family so the three kids in the back seat (ages 5, 9, and 14) could watch it on the borrowed DVD player if they got too squrrelly. Probably a good thing the battery hadn’t been charged, because by the time we sat down to watch it on the big screen TV at the beach house we rented, we discovered it was in Mongolian with subtitles, which pretty much cracked everybody up, especially when the movie began with a tiny wrinkled Mongolian great-grandfather staring into the camera and setting up the story. We had to read the subtitles out loud for the benefit of the 5-year-old and about a half hour into the film it required too much transition from beach mode to keep attending so we gave it up. But later at home, I watched it to the end and found it deeply moving, beautifully filmed, and a great learning experience. We’ve all become familiar with other big deserts – the Sahara, the Mojave, the Sonoran, the Australian outback – but we never see that much about the Gobi desert and its people. And its camels. This is the story of one four-generation intact family all living in two of those tents called yurts way out in the middle of serious nowhere in a fascinating blend of ancient rituals and modern conveniences. The spine of the story is the birth of a baby white camel whose mother has a hard labor and bums out so badly that she refuses to care for or feed him. Now the ancient ritual part kicks in and the family sends the two youngest boys on a journey by camel (what else) to the nearest civilization to bring back a Mongolian violin player to charm the savage beast. Enough said. I hope you try it out if only to be able to say you’ve seen a camel weep, because it does, and you probably will too. As for March of the Penguins, I took my grandchildren to see it at the theater and, while it was an extraordinary look at the life of the Emperor penguin in Antarctica and narrated by the soothing voice of Morgan Freeman, with great photography and only a few tasteful scenes of the inevitable deaths that occur, my young audience pronounced it “boring” afterwards, and I have to admit there were a few moments when I thought to myself “okay, enough marching, dammit.” I guess what I got to thinking in retrospect about both these wonderful films is that this generation coming up is used to speed and pizzazz and flipping the channels and rap music and some days it’s hard for even me to remember that I grew up on a farm before TV when life moved at a slower pace and penguins and camels were marvelous creatures. I’m glad I have those memories.
  

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  Deep Thought: “The old pool shooter had won many a game in his life. But now it was time to hang up the cue. When he did, all the other cues came crashing to the floor. “Sorry,” he said with a smile.”
  Today I am grateful for: Stamps
  Guess the Movie: “I think if people see this footage, they’ll say Oh, my God, that’s horrible. And then they’ll go on eating their dinners.” Answer, Hotel Rwanda, 2004. Winner: tearsign.
  Military Families to Join Cindy Sheehan in Crawford
  Gold Star and Military Families from Across Country on Their Way to Texas
  CRAWFORD, Texas – August 8 – More members of Gold Star Families for Peace (GSFP) and Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) are traveling to Texas to join the protest outside of President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he is vacationing for the month of August. (Rest of article here.)

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