cheetahs

When Mom took me out yesterday to teach me how to drive my blasted stick shift, that seemed like the obvious thing to write about next time I had time to blog. I mean, can you really imagine anything funnier than me trying to ... yeah. Probably not.

Then I went to work this morning, and in the quiet of the first couple hours, something else profound hit me square between the eyes, and I knew a different essay must be written first. (Incidentally, I can't remember what it was. That's how those things go for me.)

Driving through town on my way home this evening, inspired by the swarms of costumed children wandering the streets in search of candy handouts, I decided that perhaps Halloween would make for a more timely subject. I started developing a few themes in the back of my mind.

But ... then I came home, and Mom was making pizza, and she and Dad and Sam and I watched Duma. And I changed my mind. I have to write about this instead.

How many movies have you seen, how many books have you read, whose storyline revolves closely around a person (usually a lonely child) who develops a deep and lasting relationship with a wild animal they've raised since it was a baby? Whatever else happens in the course of the story, how many of them don't culminate in a climactic, emotional scene where the child finally has to let the animal go free?

Alaska. Free Willy. Fly Away Home. Kaavik. Hidalgo. Big Ben. These are just off the top of my head. The list goes on. And then there's Duma.

I was about as excited to see Duma for the first time (tonight was the second) as I generally am to hear that we're having salad for lunch. (Which isn't much. Salad is not exciting.) Oh boy, I thought, another movie about a boy and his pet cheetah. Watch me recite the whole thing by heart before I even see it.

But it surprised me. It was beautiful.

Unlike most of its stereotypical counterparts, Duma has its own story to tell, and it tells it with grace and honesty. The writing is careful without being contrived, and its execution is breathlessly subtle. The plot is simple; the characters are real; the music and camera work are gently and effectively understated. Told by a child who's recently lost a parent, perhaps the story's most striking trait is its absolute failure to qualify as melodramatic.

The story is good enough to go out without makeup. That's all there is to it.

Near the end of the film, as Xan (the film's ~12 year old protagonist) prepares to leave Duma (his cheetah) behind in the wild, my little brother Sam attempted to retain his composure in the midst of obvious distress.

"I'd really 'preciate it," he said, "if he'd just ... get Yuma, and ... go home, and ... yeah."

"Duma wants to be free," my dad said wisely. "That's what's good for him. Even Xan wants him to be free."

"He does?" said Sam, plaintive and unconvinced. "But he isn't smiling. Why isn't he happy?"

"Well, because he'll miss Duma," Dad said.

There was a long pause, and then Sam burst into tears.

"It isn't fair," he said over and over, after the movie was finished, as Dad tried to reason with him about the story's justice. "If somebody has a aminal, they shouldn't have to let it go." Why? "Because it was their aminal."

(Yes, I spelled 'animal' that way on purpose. That's the way he says it, and it's precious.)

Part of me wishes I still absorbed stories and drank them up the way a child does. Sure, I love a good story. Yes, my throat got tight more than once before Duma's credits rolled, even though I'd seen it once already. But to feel Xan's loneliness so acutely that I begin to sob as he leaves his friend behind forever? I've closed the door to that kind of feeling; it's just a window now, and I can see to the other side, but I don't dare reach through. The waters are too deep, and there's too much pain, too much joy, too much of everything. I can't feel all of it. I have to protect myself from drowning.

But why?