Site Presented By
Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
The greatest kids movie of the year is proving to be as lovable and resilient as its eponymous cheetah.
Aug 4, 2005 | Carroll Ballard's "Duma," the story of (among other things) a friendship between a 12-year-old boy and an orphaned cheetah, could stand tall on the beauty of its images alone: Ballard and his cinematographer, Werner Maritz, show us vast green-gold South African plains, deep sapphire nighttime skies with the inky-matte texture of crepe and, most stunning of all, a cheetah moving so fast he appears ready to take flight. These are the sorts of images that draw us to the movies in the first place, and "Duma," in particular, demands to be seen on the big screen.
But unless Warner Bros. has a change of heart (or, more accurately, a change of business strategy), audiences won't get that chance. "Duma," and the sort of intelligent, visually rich filmmaking it represents, are endangered species.
The story told in "Duma" is simple only on the surface: One night a young white South African boy named Xan (Alex Michaletos) is driving down a dark ribbon of road with his dad (Campbell Scott) when he spots an orphaned cheetah cub wobbling toward the danger of oncoming traffic. They scoop the cub into a net and look around for the mother, who's nowhere to be found. So they bring the cub home to their farm, and to Xan's mom (Hope Davis), where he quickly finds a place among the scrabbling chickens and lowing livestock; he spends his nights in purring luxury under the covers of Xan's bed.
But Xan's dad recognizes that as this big cat gets bigger -- he has been named Duma, the Swahili word for "cheetah" -- Xan will have to start thinking about returning him to the wild, where he belongs. "Duma's got to live the life he was born to," the dad explains. "His wildness is something he knows without even knowing it. It's in his bones, in his blood. Like a memory."
Those words are the beginning of a serious adventure for Xan and Duma, one involving loss and grief, but also one that proves to Xan he has the resources to deal with whatever comes his way -- they're in his bones, in his blood. "Duma" is the sort of story that's sometimes unthinkingly called formulaic, but the better word for it is "archetypal" -- it speaks to some of the deepest feelings, and fears, in all of us. (Karen Janszen and Mark St. Germain wrote the script, from a story by Janszen and Carol Flint; the story was adapted from a picture book by Carol Cawthra Hopcraft and Xan Hopcraft.)
Even so, it's what Ballard does with this story that makes it sing. Ballard's movies include the lovely "Fly Away Home," a picture about a girl's experience with a flock of baby geese that itself feels airborne, and "The Black Stallion," one of the most beautifully filmed adventure stories ever made (for kids or adults). He's the master of a rare kind of movie storytelling; there is no other filmmaker quite like him. Timeless without ever seeming old-fashioned or hokey, his movies feel like ballads that have been passed down from the generations before us, blends of words and images that constitute a kind of cross-cultural visual music.
And while Ballard's movies always have potent undercurrents, his ideas emerge so subtly that you never feel beaten down by them. Xan and Duma's adventure takes them -- together, but without parental supervision -- out into the South African wilderness, where they meet a drifter named Ripkuna (the wonderful Eamonn Walker). Ripkuna has left his village and his family; he set out to build a better life, but somehow (we're not told exactly how), he has failed. Ripkuna and Xan eye each other suspiciously at first, and it takes a long time for them to bridge their differences. (When Ripkuna hands Xan his water bottle, Xan wipes the mouth of it, warily and with great obviousness, before drinking.) The friendship between Xan and Ripkuna emerges slowly but deepens quickly. And Ripkuna, indifferent to Duma at first (at one point, early on, he eyes him as possible food, a notion Xan stomps out immediately), eventually realizes that this grand creature has something to teach him, too.
