A nomadic family in Mongolia's Gobi desert faces a problem when a white camel colt is born in a difficult delivery and the mother rejects it. Repeated efforts by the extended family to get the mother to nurse the colt fail. The colt stands alone and cries for its mother. The family worries that the colt will not survive. Finally, Dude (Enkhbulgan Ikhbayar), the older boy, is sent to a nearby town to find a musician who can perform a "Hoos" ceremony. Little Ugna (Uuganbaatar Ikhbayar) begs to go along. The two boys travel for miles across the desert, stopping at a neighbor's yert, where Ugna is delighted by his first encounter with television. They travel on to the village, and then return home with word that a musician is on the way. A musical ceremony is performed in an effort to get the mother camel to accept her colt. The Story of the Weeping Camel is a blend of documentary footage and narrative. Filmmakers Luigi Falorni and Byambasuren Davaa cast a real nomad family of herders and shot many of the events in the film as they occurred. The Story of the Weeping Camel was selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art for inclusion in the 2004 edition of New Directors/New Films. It also won the 2003 European Film Award for Best Documentary. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Review
One might be inclined to dismiss The Story of the Weeping Camel as a National Geographic-style exercise in routine ethnography, but that would be a tragic mistake. In fact, National Geographic World Films produced The Story of the Weeping Camel, and it's a delightfully warm and engaging film about some photogenic nomadic herders in the Gobi Desert and their camels. So, of course, it has that Fast Runner/Robert Flaherty-type thing going for it, in that this is an interesting culture with which few viewers will be overly familiar. Most Westerners don't know much about camels and rarely have the opportunity to see one brought into this world. They are surprisingly interesting creatures. For one thing, when they are born, their humps are all floppy. Filmmakers Luigi Falorni and Byambasuren Davaa (who is originally from Mongolia, where the film was shot) were fortunate enough to be on hand when a camel crisis occurred, of just the type they had planned to invent, if necessary. So while the film has an appropriately calm pace, befitting the lives it depicts, there is also an elementally powerful narrative drive in the story of a mother that rejects her offspring. The story of the young boy's (the undeniably adorable Uuganbaatar Ikhbayar) first exposure to TV and video games also offers trenchant commentary on the inexorable erosion of ancient tribal cultures. Beyond that, the film is entertaining and surprisingly moving. The camel isn't the only one who weeps. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
During Spring, a family of nomadic shepherds assists the births of their camel herd. The last camel to calve this season has a protracted labor that persists for two days. With the assistance and intervention of the family, a rare white calf is born. This is her first calving. Despite the efforts of the shepherds, the mother rejects the newborn, refusing it her milk and fails to establish a care-bond with it.
To restore harmony between the mother and calf, the nomadic family call upon the services of group of lamas who perform a ritual with bread or dough 'effigies' (Tibetan: torma) of the mother, the calf and the individual members of the family. The rite opens with the sound of a sacred conchshell horn followed by bells in the hands of lamas, some of whom wield 'vajra' (Sanskrit). The rite takes place with members of the extended nomadic community and a number of lama at a sacred place that consists of one end of a log, or wooden pole, set in the earth, with the other end raised to the sky: a stylized 'victory banner' (Sanskrit: Dhvaja) with a piece of blue fabric entwined around it, functioning as a prayer flag (darchor-style). The log is supported by a cairn of rocks at its base as foundation. The ritual does not re-establish harmony between the mother and calf.
The family then resolve to secure the services of an indigenous 'violinist' to play the music for a Mongolian 'Hoos' ritual. They send their two young boys on a journey through the desert to the community marketplace to locate a musician. The 'violinist' --who plays more precisely, a Morin Khuur-- is summoned to the camp and a ritual of folk music and chanting is enacted. The musician first drapes the morin khuur on the first hump of the camel to establish a sympathetic magical linkage between the mother and the state of harmony represented by the instrument. Then once this is done removes the instrument and commences to play. As the musician sounds the Mongolian 'violin', the female family member who lulled her child to sleep with a lullaby earlier in the documentary, repeatedly entones the calming sounds and beautiful melody of the 'hoos'. Immediately after the rite the mother and calf are reconciled and the calf draws milk from her teat.
