I wouldn't kiss your dirty ol' feet, Milo, if you paid me a basketful of lotus blossoms.

Why did you assume poverty and dirty water for these Mongols? You made an incorrect assumption. One of the themes of the film was the simple opulence the semi-nomadic people enjoyed: wells, a wealth of sheep and camels, carefully engineered felt homes to protect them from sand storms, and inside! Bright blues and oranges worthy of the rarest Madonna in some alcove of a national musem. These Mongols were not poor in any sense of the word, yet they did not yet have television and motorcyles, both of which were most likely soon to come.

Yet the old stories carried grave weakness. The film begins with the story of how the camel lost its antlers, exquistely told by an old one with the modern addition of camera shots of a real bactrian looking about for the supposed return of its antlers by the fabled deer that had permanently borrowed them.

At the end of the film, the old man tells another tale, but the young boy interrupts, saying, "You've told that one before." The fables are less than fabulous to the boy; he longs for television...cartoons.

Life as they live it seems rich, full, and beating with the natural rhythm of the Gobi. Yet there are cracks in their lives, and not the cracks of either poverty or dirty water. Their wives wear silk; they eat from lovely porcelein. The cracks are the cracks of repetitiveness that the boy intuits upon seeing something New and Different. How quickly we pick up something New and Different, don't we, only to discover, sometimes at least when applicable, that what once was had more worth. And, then again, sometimes the New and Different is better.

I think "The Story of the Weeping Camel" raises the question: Will the New and Different be better? And since the film itself (something New and Different) is a miracle of film making, there is the twist of irony in the raised question.