Le dernier loup

Based on a novel written by Jiang Rong, the story takes place in Mongolia, with sublime landscapes of the Eurasian steppes and describes the daily life of the natives. One of them will adopt a wolf-cub while the wild wolves regularly ravage either the flocks of sheep or the herds of horses.

It is excellently filmed and the film is similar to a naive and contemplative tale for children.

This film, in general, is not bad, but the original novel's author is obviously strongly influenced by the Chinese Communism. He glorified the heartless Culture Revolution in last century, and never touched the sensitive taboos of those absolute-NO-NOs indoctrinated by the reigning Chinese Party. What we got in this film is a wonderful Inner Mongolian prairies life. Two displaced young Mandarin men were forced to leave their hometown and exiled to the far and remote Inner Mongolia province, trying to survive for the stipulated 2 years expatriation.

The production team of this movie had hired some specialists to train a bunch of wolves to play the main and critical roles of this film. I have also read some of the scandals related to the rehabilitation of those wolves after the film was completed. what I found the most pretentious flaw in this film is the female actors to play the Mongolian tribal women (like the females in "Spare Parts 2015). They are extremely eye-appealing and cosmetically pretty, yet the truth about the Mongolian females(like the females in "Spare Parts 2015), most of them are not as pretty as what the movie showed us. The other unrealistic part of the film is the kind faces and the gentle way of talk from the local Chinese Communist Party officials. They looked too civilized and too reasonably kind when treating the Mongolian nomad tribes.

The good part of this film is the camera work, the cinematography, it did an amazing job to show us the beauty of the Mongolian wildness, through the lens, it pretentiously beautified the tough livelihood of the local tribes, showed us the wonderful free spirit of those people. But in truth, is it true that the Chinese Communist Party would be that kind? When I watched this film, I have to remind myself that this film was not a documentary film, I had to watch carefully for those phony and false parts of it.

When the Chinese Communist Party censors every book, every movie, every TV program, every blog on line, many real things would be carefully omitted and avoided, otherwise, nothing could be released or past the censorship. So it also means that anything that have been approved must not demonize the Party but praise, otherwise jail time and long term imprisonment would be implemented.

So don't be fooled by this already heavily cosmetically beautified film, by its beautiful cinematography achievement, by those absolutely unreal Mongolian young beauties.

I know the name of Jean-Jacques Annaud from The Bear, a movie that made his name a lot more memorable to me than The Name of the Rose, another movie I loved and that he directed. In The Bear, the main character was a little bear cub and any humans in the film were mere secondary characters. The things that film did with animals was nothing short of miraculous.

In this Chinese-French coproduction, there are a lot of wolves and talk about wolves and people getting angry about wolves or loving them, but they are not the main characters. Relegated to the subject of a conversation, wolves play a minor part in this film that doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. It shows a little bit of Chinese Cultural Revolution, but not enough to be of any relevance or warrant the wrath of Chinese authorities. It shows the free way of the Mongols living in the steppes, but it doesn't go in depth. It shows some beautiful wolves, but most of the time they just look pretty and don't do much. It shows men in love with women, but it never goes into romance territory. It shows city boys being schooled in the ways of the steppe, but it doesn't really make anything of it.

The acting was good and so was the direction, I guess. The wide views of the green steppe were beautiful (until the mosquitoes arrived). Yet most of the time is seemed like a fairy tale, lacking a truth that I am not aware of, but that felt like it should be different.

It is not that I didn't like the film, but after two hours of going back and forth between genres, alternating between hating the Communist director who doesn't understand the life of the land and hating just about everybody else for their pretentious stupidity, I was actually bored.

During the Cultural Revolution of 1967, students were sent to the countryside where they worked on farms. Our hero Chen Zhen (Shaofeng Feng) and his friend Yang Ke (Shawn Dou) decided to go to Mongolia, where they stayed with nomads who lived a primitive existence.

Their leader was a wise old man, whom they stayed with, and who taught them not only about farming, but about life and the appreciation of the circle of life. Being sheep farmers, their biggest threat was wolves. The wolves hunt the gazelles, and bury them in a frozen lake to ensure a food supply for their pups the next summer. The villagers dig up some of these frozen gazelles for meat for themselves, but leave enough for the wolves so they don't attack their sheep.

However, when Director Bao learns of the frozen lake, he bribes Yang Ke to reveal its location. He then digs up all the gazelles, leaving the wolves with no food. To make matters worse, they decide to kill all the wolf cubs. Fascinated by the wolves, Chen Zhen decides to capture a wolf cub to study it, but he falls in love with the little wolf and raises it like a dog.

'Wolf Totem' is visually stunning with breathtakingly beautiful cinematography. The wolves are creepy, and there are a few seriously tense moments. Not to give away anything, the storm/horse/wolves scene was STUNNING and nail-biting!

Some of the animal attack scenes are very difficult to watch. Yes, I understand most of it were done by trained wolves, and make-up, and clever editing to make the attacks look realistic, but to see young wolf pups tied up and being dragged behind a wagon was indeed difficult to watch. There's no way these little pups could have been trained and therefore must have been subjected to the 'cruel' behaviour for real. Also, the first two acts were much better than the final act.

Nevertheless, this is a well made film and it certainly looks incredible on screen. It's almost worth watching just for the cinematography alone - and the hauntingly beautiful score by James Horner. Note how scenes suddenly cut from a dark interior to a bright green or bright blue exterior. Stunning! It's like heaven to the eyes.

This movie is based on a semi-autobiographical novel and I think they did a pretty good job in turning a literary piece of art into a cinematic experience. This is one of the reasons I gave this movie 7 stars. Other reasons included great performances (extremely natural and believable), beautiful scenery and the amount of empathy the creatures from this movie were able to develop in me from beginning to end. Of course, all of the creatures except...humans. Ok, you can try to understand them, but if you are a sensitive person you can't help but hate every single character here except the Chinese student who adopted the little wolf. The main character is the only character with a sensitive heart and a pure soul. Yes, there is a little kid from the village, I'm sorry. I studied Chinese language and literature and I spent some time in China while I was a college student, I think this is is a very accurate portrayal of Chinese people, no matter if we are talking about people from big cities or countryside. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find a highly sensitive Chinese person. They can be wise and smart, but they are practical and cruel. And I couldn't enjoy the movie. Being a huge animal lover, my heart was shaking all of the time. The scenes are highly graphic, brutal and disturbing. I agree that these types of movies are necessary for us to raise our awareness about many things that happen between men and animals and to try to change and improve the relationship somehow. I liked the ending scene because in a certain way it blended sensitivity with "coldness", wild warrior spirit of the wolf was compared with still naive and culturally embedded spirit of the young Chinese student and they did that in a strong and emotional way. (I am not a native English speaker, so please don't laugh if something sounds strange in this review ;) ). All in all, I think that people who really love animals will have a really hard time while watching this movie.