The Story of the Weeping Camel

Not my baby: Just try keeping a dry eye during The Story of the Weeping Camel

By Jeannette Catsoulis

With Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North for a template, and a childhood story for inspiration, film students Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni trudged into Mongolia's Gobi desert in search of a movie. Seven weeks later they emerged with footage so magical and so emotionally devastating that even hardened male critics--who haven't shed a tear since Stella Dallas--are being brought to their knees by The Story of the Weeping Camel.

Using Flaherty's technique of "narrative documentary"--real people enacting stories based on their actual lives--the filmmakers were looking for a family of nomadic camel herders, hoping to film a story that Davaa, herself the granddaughter of nomads, recalled from her childhood. Searching during the brief camel birthing season, they found exactly what they wanted: four generations of one family, living in three tent-like "yerts" and surrounded by pregnant camels. When the last female, after a long and agonizing labor, gives birth to a rare white colt and then rejects the baby, the filmmakers knew they had their film. What they didn't know was how astonishing that film would be.

On one level, The Story of the Weeping Camel is a deceptively simple melodrama. The birth itself is harrowing, and the fragile colt, named Botok, bleats pitiably as the mother snaps at him and runs away. His attempts to suckle, assisted by the family, provoke violent snorting and kicking from the visibly enraged female; watching her haunt the fringes of the herd, or stand alone gazing at the horizon, you would swear you were witnessing a severe case of post-partum depression.

But it's the family's subsequent actions that take the film to another, deeper level, beautifully illuminating both the ancient bond between man and animals and our stewardship of the earth itself. Instead of simply continuing to hand-feed Botok, the family decides to perform a traditional ritual to heal the mother. A violinist must be fetched from a settlement 50 kilometers away, and the two youngest boys--the improbably named Dude and his 6-year-old brother, Ugna--are dispatched. On camel, of course.

The ritual itself, and its astonishing outcome, are mesmerizing enough; but Davaa and Falorni paint an entire world with their film, a disappearing one of mutual dependence and humility. Without a hint of nagging or didacticism, the film's message of respect for all life is what catches in the throat, as a grandmother braids camel hair into halters and the boys play games with discarded camel teeth. In a thanksgiving ceremony, the first colt of the season is adorned in honor of the earth. "We are not the last generation," says Ikchee, the youngest father, though he knows this understanding to be less than universal.

The Story of the Weeping Camel will ensnare you with sights and sounds: the staggering array of expressions on a camel's face, the plaintive beauty of a young woman's voice in song, the woeful moan of the abandoned baby above the whine of an ever-present wind. The picture leaves you with a feeling of elation tinged with sadness, a profound sense of loss as we see the bustling settlement with its motorcycles and video arcades and kids in Western dress. While little Ugna stares, hypnotized, at his first TV screen, we can't help but wonder how long the rhythm of the desert will prevail.