{"id":1467,"date":"2005-10-18T08:57:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-18T15:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2005\/10\/18\/the-camel-is-weeping-because-her-movie-sucks\/"},"modified":"2005-10-18T08:57:00","modified_gmt":"2005-10-18T15:57:00","slug":"the-camel-is-weeping-because-her-movie-sucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2005\/10\/18\/the-camel-is-weeping-because-her-movie-sucks\/","title":{"rendered":"The Camel is Weeping Because Her Movie Sucks"},"content":{"rendered":"

To be fair, The Story of the Weeping Camel<\/span><\/a>, which I watched last night, does have its moments. Some of the photography is gorgeous; the camels are fascinating animals to watch; and it’s cheaper than actually visiting a village in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert.<\/p>\n

But Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, it was mind-numbingly boring<\/span> to a degree I could not have previously imagined.<\/p>\n

I blame those wacky German filmmakers.<\/p>\n

I mean, okay, I acknowledge its achievements as “narrative documentary” and “ethnographic filmmaking”, but the entire plot can be summed up in less than twenty-five words. Not just the concept– the actual, complete story.<\/p>\n

And the characters are presented so passively that I didn’t care about most of them, one way or the other. The exceptions were the brothers, Dude (which I’m sure is pronounced “duh-day” or something, but I kept thinking: Jeff Lebowski?<\/a>) and Ugna (which is the diminutive form of his full name, but I kept thinking of those pig-faces from Cloud City<\/a>), who ride out from the village to find musicians to perform a ritual to get the titular mother camel to allow her calf to nurse.<\/p>\n

And that’s another thing: I can respect ancient cultures and hokey religions and even Gaian mysticism, but I don’t enjoy listening to it. I suppose the ritual with the lamas was supposed to be a contrast to the younger brother wanting a television set, but the debate is never developed. In the worst tradition of documentaries, the film doesn’t have a point of view. And that’s maddening for me, as a storyteller, to sit through.<\/p>\n

Clearly, I’m not the right audience for this movie. Many other people loved it– hell, it was nominated for an Oscar– but I just couldn’t get into it. It’s one of those movies where you have to care about the subject matter beforehand. It doesn’t suck you in; it doesn’t explain why you should care about these people and their situation. It felt like a zoo exhibit, but even at the zoo, you get some kind of placard telling you what you’re looking at and why it matters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To be fair, The Story of the Weeping Camel, which I watched last night, does have its moments. Some of the photography is gorgeous; the camels are fascinating animals to watch; and it’s cheaper than actually visiting a village in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[1,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}