- Released: 19 February 2015
- Directed by: Jean-Jacques Annaud
- Running time: 2 h 1 min
- Rating: 3/5
Synopsis
A Chinese student named Chen Zhen goes to stay with a group of Mongolian nomads, where he learns about their ways of shepherding and how they deal with the local predators, wolves. Eventually, he adopts one of the wild beasts as his own.
My Thoughts
I didn’t know what to expect for this movie, but it didn’t exactly sway me. I’ve heard good things about Annaud’s other films, but this one felt a bit lacking.
While the story is definitely engaging, it doesn’t really create any characters you get really attached to. At least, I didn’t find myself really getting into any of them. They just felt kind of two-dimensional in the way they were presented. Even Chen Zhen just didn’t do it for me as a protagonist. He’s reckless and continuously puts the safety of others (and their lifestock) at stake by keeping his wolf around. Some characters die, but none of the deaths really leave an impact. Heck, the most impactful death in this is that of Cloudy, the lead wolf who gets literally chased to his end after which he simply drops dead with exhaustion.
There was only one moment outside of that that got an emotional responds out of me, which is when two of the shepherds have to keep a herd of horses safe in a snowstorm while the wolves are hunting them and driving the horses into a frozen lake that can’t support their weight. It was a really interesting and intense scene that is never quite met at any other points of the movie.
The movie also portrays wolves as vengeful hunters with near-human intelligence. Yes, they’re smart predators, but they wouldn’t think of stuff like piling up a bunch of sheep bodies to get over a wall. That’s just anthropomorphization and if you want your movie for adults to be taken seriously you’re not supposed to do that. I do believe that to a certain extent the wolves can be vengeful, but in no way near the extent this movie portrays them as.
Chen Zhen also has a really unlikable moment when he confronts the wife of one of the shepherds that died during the horse-lake skirmish. He basically says that her recently dead husband wants for him to become her husband just because he’s attracted to her. What a dick move.
The ending is framed as bittersweet yet inspiring. What happens? All the wild wolves on the steppe are dead and only the recently-set-free Little Wolf of Chen Zhen remains. Our protagonist looks at his wolf one last time before the animal runs off. Inspiring music plays and we get to see a spiritual wolf in the clouds. Great… except that that wolf is going to die. He’s grown up in captivity, constantly being fed, and has no idea how to hunt. There’s not even a wild pack of wolves left to teach him since Cloudy’s pack was completely murdered a few scenes earlier. So yeah, this inspiring ending is basically saying that this wolf pup, the titular “last wolf” is going to die anyways. Bummer.
I also thought it was pretty funny that the only way to distinguish Cloudy, the wild pack’s lead wolf, was by giving them digitally altered lime-green eyes and just putting some white makeup on his muzzle. It looks so fake it’s honestly quite funny.
Also, Little Wolf is never given a name. Just feels very impersonal to me. The closest we get to a name is the nickname “little wolf” he gets constantly called. I just don’t get why they’d bother naming Cloudy (though his name is never said on-screen) when our main wolf in the story doesn’t even get a name.
Overall, an interesting backstory but the final product leaves much to be desired. It definitely sparked my interest in this culture, but the lackluster characters just didn’t make me care particularly much for any one of them.
While the story is definitely engaging, it doesn’t really create any characters you get really attached to. At least, I didn’t find myself really getting into any of them. They just felt kind of two-dimensional in the way they were presented. Even Chen Zhen just didn’t do it for me as a protagonist. He’s reckless and continuously puts the safety of others (and their lifestock) at stake by keeping his wolf around. Some characters die, but none of the deaths really leave an impact. Heck, the most impactful death in this is that of Cloudy, the lead wolf who gets literally chased to his end after which he simply drops dead with exhaustion.
There was only one moment outside of that that got an emotional responds out of me, which is when two of the shepherds have to keep a herd of horses safe in a snowstorm while the wolves are hunting them and driving the horses into a frozen lake that can’t support their weight. It was a really interesting and intense scene that is never quite met at any other points of the movie.
The movie also portrays wolves as vengeful hunters with near-human intelligence. Yes, they’re smart predators, but they wouldn’t think of stuff like piling up a bunch of sheep bodies to get over a wall. That’s just anthropomorphization and if you want your movie for adults to be taken seriously you’re not supposed to do that. I do believe that to a certain extent the wolves can be vengeful, but in no way near the extent this movie portrays them as.
Chen Zhen also has a really unlikable moment when he confronts the wife of one of the shepherds that died during the horse-lake skirmish. He basically says that her recently dead husband wants for him to become her husband just because he’s attracted to her. What a dick move.
The ending is framed as bittersweet yet inspiring. What happens? All the wild wolves on the steppe are dead and only the recently-set-free Little Wolf of Chen Zhen remains. Our protagonist looks at his wolf one last time before the animal runs off. Inspiring music plays and we get to see a spiritual wolf in the clouds. Great… except that that wolf is going to die. He’s grown up in captivity, constantly being fed, and has no idea how to hunt. There’s not even a wild pack of wolves left to teach him since Cloudy’s pack was completely murdered a few scenes earlier. So yeah, this inspiring ending is basically saying that this wolf pup, the titular “last wolf” is going to die anyways. Bummer.
I also thought it was pretty funny that the only way to distinguish Cloudy, the wild pack’s lead wolf, was by giving them digitally altered lime-green eyes and just putting some white makeup on his muzzle. It looks so fake it’s honestly quite funny.
Also, Little Wolf is never given a name. Just feels very impersonal to me. The closest we get to a name is the nickname “little wolf” he gets constantly called. I just don’t get why they’d bother naming Cloudy (though his name is never said on-screen) when our main wolf in the story doesn’t even get a name.
Overall, an interesting backstory but the final product leaves much to be desired. It definitely sparked my interest in this culture, but the lackluster characters just didn’t make me care particularly much for any one of them.
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