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THE CAVE OF THE YELLOW DOG
Directed & Written by: Byambasuren Davaa.
Produced by: Stephan Schesch.
Director of Photography: Daniel Schoenauer.
Edited by: Sarah Clara Weber.
Released by: Tartan.
Language: Mongolian with English Subtitles.
Country of Origin: Mongolia/Germany. 90 Min. Not Rated.
With: Nansal Batchuluun, Urjindorj Batchuluun, Buyandulam D. Batchuluun, Nansalmaa Batchuluun, Batbayer Batchuluun.

This Little Ger on the Steppes story will appeal to any fan of Little House on the Prairie. Writer/director Byambasuren Davaa has found similar universality in a simple story through what might be the world’s most adorable family in one of the globe’s most remote places.

As in her Oscar-nominated debut feature The Story of the Weeping Camel, Davaa gently and creatively incorporates a fictional story into what would otherwise be a National Geographic observation of nomadic culture in her native Mongolia. Davaa has a more ambitious reach here to achieve three layers of storytelling. The quotidian life of sheep herders portrayed by the Batchuluun family, though less exotic than camels, does answer our curiosity about skinning a sheep, making cheese from goats’ milk, and taking down and transporting their dwelling, a ger (the more familiar yurt is the Russian name), on four yak-drawn carts. Any first world parent will be sympathetic to see that it is just as difficult to keep a rambunctious toddler in a yak cart as it is to get one into a car seat.

A fifth cart is for the father’s motorbike and electric generator, and the powerful pull of modernization haunts the parents as they question whether to continue their nomadic lifestyle. When luminous six-year-old Nansaa comes home for summer vacation from boarding school in the unseen provincial capital of Altay, her mother quickly gets her out of her stiff school uniform and into her traditional attire. One sister is fascinated to hear from Nansaa that there is a place where people pee indoors. (These kids are so cute at play together, the Fanning sisters should watch out for the competition.) And in a quietly telling and ironic anecdote, the father thinks he’s doing a good deed for his wife when he obtains an unfamiliar light, colorful plastic ladle, but which quickly burns up in the metal wok.

There are other unintended consequences as neighbors give up the old ways for urban life and loosen the critical support network of cooperation vital to living the nomadic life. When they leave, they abandon their dogs that then join the increasing wolf packs, leading them to the sheep herds. The nomads can no longer muster hunting parties to keep the wolf population down, and the father is fearful for his family’s safety, as we hear the scary sounds of an attack in the pitch black. So when Nansaa finds an abandoned dog in a rocky crevice and continually defies her father to keep him as a pet, his escalating exasperation is grounded in his loving care for his family, unlike so many portrayals of traditional father/daughter conflicts. She has a lot in common with the older heroine in Flicka, but with no back talk.

Davaa is not quite as successful cinematically as she tries to capture with a swirling hand-held camera the feeling of being around a campfire where an old woman tells metaphoric legends, and the film’s middle section could make young viewers restless. The frequent reference to the Buddhist belief in reincarnation links these stories to how the nomads live in concert with nature, but they could also be interpreted as the circle of life sung in The Lion King.

The last third has most of the action and is enthralling, even if it veers into Lassie territory. After seeing the three small children independently navigate their environment with complete freedom where anything can be a toy, it is almost as frightening as scenes in March of the Penguins to be reminded that nature threatens the unprotected, here with vultures. (It may help to keep in mind that the most heart pounding scene is accomplished through the magic of editing.)

With beautiful cinematography of a landscape few of us will see in person, Davaa admirably accomplishes narrative without narration and lets universal interactions unfold slowly and subtly in front of the camera. Her student thesis project for Munich TV & Film School, this film must have earned her a top grade. Nora Lee Mandel
November 10, 2006