SWEET CATOMINE : Carroll Ballard’s Duma [6/10]
How It Was With Dooms: A True Story From Africa, by Xan Hopcroft and Carol
Cawthra Hopcroft. Imagine having a pet cheetah. Xan Hopcroft did. When Dooms, the
cheetah his family raised from a kitten, died, Xan was seven. This book, told in his
own words and decorated with his and his mother's art, celebrates the cheetah's life
€” avoiding baths, getting on the roof, learning to hunt €” and shares the sadness
of his death. Sharp photos, with a story well done, not overly cutesie, no matter
what the author's age.
[review from the BabyCenter.com website]
Apart from the names of the boy and his cheetah, and the idea that the latter is raised as the former's pet, there's very little of How It Was With Dooms – which director Ballard calls "a plot-free picture book" in the $12m Hollywood version of the story, written by Carol Flint, Karen Janszen and Mark St Germain. But that's not a problem, so endearing are the end results.
Duma is the 'proper' name of the kitten nicknamed 'Dooms' (a moniker never used in the movie) and is the Swahili word for 'cheetah' – any connection with the Russian parliament is entirely accidental. The film does not bill itself as a 'true story,' and only reveals its literary "source" during the end credits. What precedes those credits is like something the real (Nairobi-based) Xan Hopcraft might very well have daydreamed up: a barely-plausible but engagingly heroic adventure in which the schoolboy and his best pal escape their new big-city home and embark on a perilous trek across veldt, desert, jungle and river.
This (South African) Xan's quest: returning the nearly fully-grown Duma to the wild before it's too late for him to pick up the hunting instinct. Along the way, Xan (Alex Michaletos) and Duma (seamlessly played by four different adult cheetahs) are joined by taciturn, resourceful wanderer Ripkunu (Eamonn Walker) and an inquisitive, cute, nervy little bushbaby which Xan names M'shaka.
Although at the time of writing Warner Brothers don't seem to know what to do with the picture*, it's gratifying that, half a decade into the new millennium, Hollywood remains capable of at least funding such a resolutely "old-fashioned" project – entirely lacking in any kind of CGI, and thus (literally) light years away from the overwrought shenanigans of Revenge of the Sith etc: sabre-teeth instead of light-sabres, if you like. Ironically, director Ballard's first major screen credit was as second-unit cinematographer/camera operator on the original Star Wars – he then obtained funding from his UCLA pal Francis Ford Coppola for his much-loved debut feature as a director, 1979's The Black Stallion.
26 years may have passed since then, but – like Ballard's most recent film Fly Away Home (1996) – Duma adheres to a very similar template: traumatic death of parent early on… child bonds with wild-ish creature(s)… visually striking escapades ensue. This time Campbell Scott pulls off a reasonable Seth Efricken accent as Xan's doomed dad, likewise Hope Davis as his widowed mother and British actor Walker, who finds unexpected dimensions in what is occasionally a stereotyped, wisdom-spouting character.
But Duma is much more about the relatively-inexperienced Michaletos – who carries the burden of the picture lightly on his young shoulders, his increasingly tattered school uniform stirring memories of Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout. But all of the humans necessarily take second billing behind the wildlife, specifically the remarkable big cat(s). Yes, we're back in the territory covered to tear-jerking effect by Jean-Jacques Annaud in last year's underappreciated Two Brothers, and there's no harm in hanging out in this relatively peaceful, predictable, sentimental corner of the movie-world every once in a while.
There's not much to choose between the two films – Duma wears its serious themes more lightly, but doesn't milk the waterworks quite so effectively as Two Brothers, and could perhaps profitably lose 10-15 minutes. Whereas Annaud's period piece fell clunkily flat whenever the felines went off-screen, however, Ballard and co sensibly give their human participants at least as much meat to chew on as their furry co-stars.
Neil Young
23rd May, 2005
DUMA : [6/10] : US 2005 : Carroll BALLARD : 100 mins
seen at Odeon cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), 23rd May 2005 – press show
originally rated 7/10, but downgraded after further reflection, 10th Oct 2005
* Ballard says bluntly that the movie studio, Warner Brothers, was expecting a different film from him than the one he delivered… Ballard states that the studio believes it will make most of its money selling the film on DVD, rather than giving it a wide release. Thus, they've decided to open "Duma" in Phoenix, San Antonio, and Sacramento, let it play for 2 weeks to see if people come, then pull it from theatres or open it in more cities.
[Christian Answers website]