DUMA [2005] review

I had been waiting for the right time to watch DUMA for a very long time. I heard Roger Ebert review it back when it first came out, and he said to make a point of seeing it. As it features my favorite (pre-Borneo trip) animal in the world, the cheetah (duma is the Swahili word for “cheetah”), I knew it was a must see for me. I guessed that it would make me quite emotional, so I was saving it for just the right time. As this summer could be my last for viewing movies, I had to fit it in soon. I was not disappointed by the movie, but I was also not so deeply moved by it. Certainly in comparison to the last movie about animals in Africa I saw, TWO BROTHERS, which devastated me, DUMA played more as a serene poem, a movie to contemplate while laying eyes upon the magnificence and glory of the Kalahari Desert.

The story starts out as the usual boy finds abandoned baby animal, raises it, and then the audience can predict the ultimate ripping away of the grown animal from the boy. Before this can happen, the film takes a pleasantly unexpected turn and takes a different line–it’s the story of a boy growing up as he sets to release his grown-up cheetah back to where he and his father first found him. It is a satisfying journey, that is not overly manipulative, and in fact not manipulative at all.

The film manages to show a realistic, un-sappy, message about love, and the journeys one needs to take to test the strength and length of love. Wait for the right time to watch DUMA, and make sure it’s sometime in the summer.

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