this is my favourite film.
Remember Yertle the Turtle? Gertrude Mc Fuzz? The Sneeches? These are fables, their moral payloads gently, because humorously, delivered. Such a story is the Cave of the Yellow Dog, in which it isn't good to cherish the artificial above the real, or to elevate caution above love, or to worship the modern over the tried and true, or to be overbearing or ill-tempered when you can be patient and polite. It is suggested that we look deeply at whatever comes along in life, believing in the benefits that the unrolling before us of the red carpet of fate may bring. We are asked not to look at life short-sightedly, thinking only of profit and loss in the immediate situation, but to take a more long term, big picture view of the meanings of events in life. The sub-themes used to carry these concepts are, beyond the apparent domestic issues, those of death and of reincarnation, weighty themes indeed. And yet they are plumbed so delicately and gently that we practically never even notice that we are being given important ancient lessons in life that have global application in this time of human-caused environmental crisis.
I don't believe in fate, but even though the film could on one level be seen to promulgate the notion of destiny, you don't have to subscribe to that or any of the other ideas, to be moved by the love and reverence for the reality of the ordinary in the lives of the family of characters.
I've said my comment contains spoilers, because it would surely spoil the film for me if, not yet having seen it, i were to read this. If you haven't seen Cave of The Yellow Dog, please forget and ignore all you have read, and just allow the film to wander cherishingly through the green plains of a beautiful land.
Remember Yertle the Turtle? Gertrude Mc Fuzz? The Sneeches? These are fables, their moral payloads gently, because humorously, delivered. Such a story is the Cave of the Yellow Dog, in which it isn't good to cherish the artificial above the real, or to elevate caution above love, or to worship the modern over the tried and true, or to be overbearing or ill-tempered when you can be patient and polite. It is suggested that we look deeply at whatever comes along in life, believing in the benefits that the unrolling before us of the red carpet of fate may bring. We are asked not to look at life short-sightedly, thinking only of profit and loss in the immediate situation, but to take a more long term, big picture view of the meanings of events in life. The sub-themes used to carry these concepts are, beyond the apparent domestic issues, those of death and of reincarnation, weighty themes indeed. And yet they are plumbed so delicately and gently that we practically never even notice that we are being given important ancient lessons in life that have global application in this time of human-caused environmental crisis.
I don't believe in fate, but even though the film could on one level be seen to promulgate the notion of destiny, you don't have to subscribe to that or any of the other ideas, to be moved by the love and reverence for the reality of the ordinary in the lives of the family of characters.
I've said my comment contains spoilers, because it would surely spoil the film for me if, not yet having seen it, i were to read this. If you haven't seen Cave of The Yellow Dog, please forget and ignore all you have read, and just allow the film to wander cherishingly through the green plains of a beautiful land.