Duma (Widescreen Edition)
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DVD details
Actor: Alex Michaeletos, Campbell Scott, Hope Davis, Mary Makhatho, Nthabiseng KenoshiBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.77:1
Running Time: 100 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-05-16
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Model: 38982
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- Carroll Ballard (The Black Stallion, Fly Away Home) directs the exciting story of 12-year-old Xan (Alexander Michaletos), who decides to return the cheetah he raised from a cub to the wild instead of allowing pursuers to place it in captivity. Harsh South African landscapes, stalking lions, crocodiles, river rapids and a mysterious drifter (Eamonn Walker) who may intend to turn the big cat in for
DVD Reviews of Duma (Widescreen Edition)
DVD Review: A sweet, gentle film (but not quite the masterpiece it could have been)
Summary: 4 Stars
Even among movie buffs, Carroll Ballard is hardly a household name. The San Francisco Bay Area director has only made a few films in his long career (Wind, The Black Stallion, Fly Away Home), and most of them deal with nature themes, wild animals in particular. In 1983 he directed what I think is one of the greatest films of that decade, Never Cry Wolf. But this title has been all but ignored by parent studio Disney, who would rather milk tired animated DVD spinoffs of past hits.
So it's sad to say that Ballard received equally dismal treatment by Warners, who backed the present film. This movie, about a cheetah, got spotty release (no pun intended) across the U.S., and Ballard was reportedly very wounded by this. The good news, if there is any, is that the transfer to home video is stunning, so much so that watching it on a 46" LCD HDTV, I really felt as though I were in a movie theater.
The film itself has some parallels to Never Cry Wolf, which I regard as Ballard's greatest masterpiece so far. In both we have a fish-out-of-water main character forced to survive in the throes of nature, with the help of a more well-adapted guide who nonetheless does not have entirely altruistic motivations. As with Never Cry Wolf, a brief narrative voiceover from the main character opens and closes the movie.
Duma has many delights, most of them residing in the earlier part of the film. The discovery and raising of the cheetah are handled expertly and memorably, with a sweetness that is never saccharine. The atmosphere (in Ballards films, the locations are often stars in themselves) is rich. The acting is typically naturalistic and understated. And most outstandingly, I think, the death the boy's father early on is handled extremely tastefully. (And don't worry I am revealing spoilers, because it's really no secret that it's coming.) It was moving, yet I never felt the director tugging at my heartstrings a la Spielberg or Zemeckis. At this point I was thinking here was another masterpiece on a par with Never Cry Wolf.
However, in the second half things fall off somewhat. This is still a fine movie, but later scenes are more conventional and do not live up to the high bar set earlier. Some of the plot becomes a bit contrived. A scene where the hungry boy and his dreadlocked friend steal some food from an outdoor banquet by way of a fake snake bite made me wince; it was staged like a moment from a TV sitcom. There is maybe a bit too much anthropomorphizing. And although there are moments of peril as we near the climax, I was never in doubt that all would turn out okay. That's my biggest problem with the movie, in fact: overall there's little conflict, and no real loss, in the third act. In Never Cry Wolf there is a tremendous loss at the end--the parent wolves are slaughtered and the pups are left as orphans, and despite what some reviews state, we never find out for certain who killed the wolves, which is the key issue the whole movie revolves around. (A lot of critics, even fanatically positive ones, missed that essential point, and assumed the Brian Dennehy character was definitely the bad guy. A careful viewing of the film shows that is not the case.) In Duma there's no equivalent moment of grief, of revelation, of change, of anything. The last act is a bit flat.
To top it off, while the closing monologue in Never Cry Wolf was brilliant, here the boy comes back and in a few brief lines spoon-feeds us the very thoughts we should have left with on our own. I *hate* it when filmmakers do that. (Something similar mars the ending of Peter Bogdanovitch's The Cat's Meow, a film, that, despite the title, is not about animals.) And frankly, I would have rolled credits a few shots earlier, back in the village, and let the audience fill in the blanks to the ultimate outcome themselves.
All this isn't to say "Don't rent this film." It is a fine movie and better than 95% of the dreck out there. I'm just a little disappointed that what could have been a masterpiece was only a "good" film, marred by some uninspired moments and an ending that could have been re-thought a little. Duma certainly deserved a better fate than...well, almost no fate at all, save that it went almost instantly to DVD. I wonder if studios will ever wake up to the unique talents of Carroll Ballard. I doubt it. The Hollywood system is just not geared for his type of work, and neither, ironically, is what little is left of the "independent" film scene.
The DVD lacks much in the way of extras. Just two extended scenes and the theatrical trailer. Someday I hope Criterion or somebody does a "best of Carroll Ballard" collection with extras, commentaries, behind-the-scenes interviews (you do wonder how he stages some of the animal scenes) and deleted footage. Still, fine as this movie is, if you've never seen any Carroll Ballard film, I urge you to start with Never Cry Wolf, which just may blow you away. Then check out Duma, Fly Away Home, and The Black Stallion, keeping in mind that fine as they are, they aren't quite of the same caliber. Then you can wonder, as I do, why the world doesn't wake up to what a great storyteller and filmmaker Ballard is.
Description of Duma (Widescreen Edition)
Features include:
?MPAA Rating: PG
?Format: DVD
?Runtime: 100 minutes
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