Howard Schumann At the beginning of The Story of the Weeping Camel, a film that chronicles the daily life of a family of shepherds in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, one of the elders tells the story of the weeping camels. At one time, he says, a camel loaned his antlers to a deer but they were never returned causing the camels to look to the horizon with tears in their eyes, hoping that their antlers will be returned. It is the spring and the time for camels to give birth. One of the camels has a painful birth and the family members help the distraught camel by pulling a beautiful white colt from her womb.Almost immediately, it seems that the camel has rejected her young for reasons unknown but perhaps because it was such a difficult delivery. Although the members of the clan make every effort to bring the mother and her offspring who they have named "Botok" together, their efforts produce no results and the picture of the baby wandering alone longing for his mother is heartbreaking. The film, however, is not a sad one. It radiates the purity of the simpler life that has gone on for centuries and the ties that nurture a family, their responsibilities and the traditions that they share. Great grandmother Chimed cooks the milk and cares for the family's young granddaughter while her mother Odgoo works with the animals and the family treats the young lambs as pets.Nothing works to bring mother and baby camel together until an ancient ritual is performed. The family's two young sons Dude and Ugna are sent on a trip by camel of what appears to be several miles to the regional tribal center at Aimak. There they request that the music teacher come to their tents to perform a ritual where the teacher will play the violin and the boys' mother will sing to the camel. The ritual was learned by Luigi Falorni, a film student in Germany, from a fellow student, a Mongolian, and they both traveled to the Far East to make the film, in the tradition of Robert J. Flaherty's Nanook of the North.At Aimak, the boys are introduced to a touch of the modern world - TV, motorcycles, and computer games. Ugna buys an ice cream and batteries for his grandfather and when he comes home, he sheepishly asks his family if they would buy him a TV. The ritual performed by the family and the music teacher highlights the healing traditions that families in the area have used for hundreds of years and it is soothing and quite beautiful. The Story of the Weeping Camel is very slow, perhaps too slow for some children, yet is a wonderful learning experience of nurturing and how other cultures live, the feeling of community, and how healing can be performed in ways other than taking two pills before bedtime.

deschreiber Do camels really weep? It's just too much to believe that this camel was weeping because she had finally overcome her trauma about rejecting her child and now her heart was opened and she was crying with happiness over feeling like a mother again and being united with her child. It would take a lot to convince me that this part actually happens. But still, I wonder if camels ever weep at all and, if so, what does make them weep?Bactrian camels, weren't they?I really appreciate the perspective given here by the person who speaks Mongolian.

edward dardis The hyperbole over this film is really over the top. I found it a bit tedious- it took two nights to watch it, and the last night I used the fast forward as I watched it on DVD.There is no conflict, no drama, no character development. Just the scenery and a look at their way of life. And animal husbandry is certainly at the center of their life. Would be a nice film to watch with kids.A much better film, IMHO, is Himalaya or Caravan, from 1999 and I will quote from someones IMDb review: The French director, Eric Valli, made this incredible film( nominated for Academy Award as Best Foreign Film in 2000) in the Dolpo region of northwestern Nepal on the Tibetan border using native people instead of professional actors. It is a fictional account of how those people actually live there in extreme isolation and is documentary in the sense that it records a way of life which will gradually disappear as more modern influence comes to the area as it has in so much of Nepal. The filming is extraordinary, the scenery is spectacular, the action is lifelike, the characters are real and the mysterious music is intriguing.So in some ways very similar to Weeping Camel, but with more drama, a real conflict to be resolved, better acting, yet also a great film you could watch with kids.

lynxxing I have spent a lot of time on the Steppes of Central Asia, and the film makers have captured the vastness, the spirit, the loveliness and the challenges that native people face. The love and beautiful lives the people and the camels live are so intertwined....the landscape is harsh to outsiders but once there it 's meaning and life take on huge dimensions that many Russian writers and artists were moved by. I experience the same senseof "old souls" on the other side of the mountains in the Altai. They are animists and through that they use music as a powerful healing medicine.I wept with the camel and now I want a white colt! This is a must-see story for everyone. SOOOOOOOO BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!! I would like to know more about the story..was it done just for the movie or is there a tradition to use music for healing?I did not want the movie to be over!!!!!!!!!!!!!