Duma

Our family saw Duma yesterday and we loved it so much, I had to place our vote today! Congratulations to Carroll Ballard, Warner Brothers and everyone else responsible for creating such a beautifully filmed movie with an equally as wonderful story! Duma is a must see for children; it sure beats most everything else out today in terms of story quality! The cinematography was incredible and all scenes involving animals were wonderfully done. I hope that big studios bring us more movies of this caliber for family entertainment. I for one, and hopefully not the only one, am tired of special effects carrying a movie as well as heroes and villains that are way too out of the ordinary.

I have no idea why this movie got such a small-scale cinema release. It certainly can't have anything to do with the quality of the film. I was surprised by Duma, because it's an extremely well-directed film which treats its audience with far more respect and intelligence than a lot of so-called "family" fare available. Also, as opposed to many films with animal protagonists, Duma doesn't treat them as objects of half-witted hokey slapstick fun, but instead makes the entire friendship between human and animal seem extremely touching and authentic.

In a way there is something almost Miyazaki -esque about this movie, in that it draws you into the narrative not with half-baked nudge nudge wink wink references which only adults will understand, but through its intelligence and excellent sense of drama alone; not to mention the great performances by Eamonn Walker and Alexander Michaeletos - two names to look out for in the future if their performances here are anything to go by. At any rate, Duma is one of the few cases where the possibly over-used moniker "A film for all ages" definitely applies. Recommended if you can find it.

Being used to today's explosion-filled, fast-paced movies being churned out on a weekly basis for the sake of selling tickets, Duma is what I'd like to say a slap in the face for all of us who get excited over the mediocrity that has brought out "The Interpreter," "Stealth," and what else is playing now...? A movie that I would definitely recommend for an entire family to watch together, there's nothing in here that would make you want to cover your kids' eyes or ears up at anytime. Instead you'd want for them, and for yourself, to sit up and pay attention to this smooth, smart movie.

Don't wait for any explosions. There is a story being told in this movie, and its being told with a fresh touch of poetry which I haven't seen in a long time.

I gave this movie an 8/10 because of one reason: Although the movie is set in Africa, its really hard to tell until halfway through the movie. In fact, the place looked whiter than Little Rock, Arkansas! But it got an 8/10 because of the story, the storytelling, and the smooth pace at which the movie flows.

This was such a lovely film for everyone, and it seems to be ending its New York run this Sunday, October 16th after just 17 days. Why? Not only did it receive excellent reviews, the showing I attended last Saturday afternoon in the counter-cultural East Village was packed! As a much needed quality family film, "Duma" should have been given a wide release and much more promotion. I rarely go to the movies, and I was waiting and hoping for its release for months.

A wonderful family film with affection, learning, adventure, mystery, and respect between the boy Xan and his cheetah, Xan's father and mother, and Xan's friend Rip. It also has a Prodigal Son theme. The cinematography is exquisite, with the golden cat with the golden eyes and the golden African desert and savanna that seem to stretch on for eternity.

A beautiful, humorous, gentle, poignant, and touching film about love, kindness, and mercy. A genuinely loving family. The courage to grow up. Are these values too truthful for Hollywood, or they too real for the general public?

"Nature breaks through the eyes of the cat." Irish proverb

With the emergence of digitized everything, photography of the actual thing is now the amazement. Splendid is everything visualized in Duma, the story of a young South African boy, Xan (Alex Michaeletos) who brings up an orphaned cheetah, Duma, to the day when his father (Campbell Scott) decides it is perilously close to the time when Duma couldn't survive in the wild.

And so, about the time they are to return Duma to his world, Xan becomes a sort of orphan himself because dad dies and leaves Xan and his mother with a big ranch to tend. As predictable as the right of passage story that ensues with Xan taking Duma back, there is a freshness of simplicity and beauty, joy and sorrow that overwhelms the clichés and makes you eager to go back to animal stories of early film, like Old Yeller, where the pets are as human than their masters and make real the abstract idea of Nature.

An unusual care for lens and animal is palpable from director Carroll Ballard and cinematographer Werner Meritz, unforgettable even. The four cheetahs used for Duma are as often lensed close up as they are in long shots, beautifully stretching their sixty-mile –an-hour legs.

With the consistency director Carroll Ballard showed in the acclaimed Fly Away Home, he weaves the theme of abandonment and reconciliation into every major scene: Even the enigmatic intruder Rip (Eamon Walker) has exiled himself from his tribe and is now returning home, cruising the river with Xan like Huck and Jim. That eventually animals and humans must take up their responsibilities is also present almost from the first frame.

Nothing new here, just a good old-fashioned pet tale, which never is boring for me, a perpetual boy with an English major's tendency to see poetry in a landscape or a cheetah's eye.

"Nature never did betray the heart that loved her." Wordsworth