Pardon my answering my own post, but I saw the movie again yesterday and wondered about the inexorable crawl of world culture onto the Gobi. I thought how impossible to stop the crawl and worried over the loss of near pure beauty in the daily lives of these herding Mongols. The photographer had taken a nearly minimalistic view in capturing even the muzzles of drinking camels, the smooth, quick movement of the rope maker's hands, the prints of camel hooves in the Gobi sand, the stirring of a pot. And the sound technician must have had a love affair with the human-like camel voice, capturing it in many moods.

So, I considered the minute and broad views of this remarkable film and thought how sad that television would make its way into the felt huts...that the young boy would begin to play video games...that the world culture would gradually fold into this semi-nomadic one.

Then it hit me. There I was in the comfort of a family room watching a television screen...taking in the beauty of the life of the Mongols...being transported to another place. And I thought, "If not them, why me?" At the very least, the current day Mongolian nomadic culture has been beautifully captured on film. At least that. At least that before it eventually becomes whatever it is to become in its next manifestation. And the boy-become-man-watching-TV will have a loving record of from where he came. We should all have such carefully documentation of a few significant days from our childhood.