The title translates to Small Yellow Field, and speaks to the smallness of the life of a boy and his father as they live a nomadic life with their sheep across the plains and foothills of the Himalayas. The boy watches the infrequent vehicle making its way across the landscape, and wonders what is beyond the empty horizons.
There is a nice universality to this film, and it covers a time we all have in our lives where we feel like the small world we were once so content within, is perhaps more of a limit than a place of contentment – I am old enough to have come full circle on that, and value my small place in a turbulent world, but coming from a standalone house in a rural lane in Northern Ireland, I can understand that feeling. The film captures it well here, and lets us do the work – there are no big flamboyant scenes of dialogue, but rather a distant longing touched on occasionally while the film spends most of its time silently observing. In this the film is strongest, as it looks beautiful – not in a 'wallpaper' sort of way, but in a way that draws the landscape into being a central character in the narrative. This works really well and makes the film more engaging, even as it has almost no dialogue or exposition.
I did have an issue with the conclusion though. On one hand it was a good ending because it left me with plenty to think about, but really it troubled me that the boy would just leave to an unknown which will certainly contain hardships, predators, and a hostile landscape – just a very different urban one from that which he is used to. I also did not like that his father was cast aside so easily – it seemed cold and unfair to both characters. That said, the film doesn't push the ending as a 'happy' one, nor does it show the lead boy displaying emotion one way or the other – he is on a journey, that is all.
Despite this (or maybe partly because of it) I did really enjoy the film for the narrative at its core, and how well it delivered it with deft touches and the use of location.
There is a nice universality to this film, and it covers a time we all have in our lives where we feel like the small world we were once so content within, is perhaps more of a limit than a place of contentment – I am old enough to have come full circle on that, and value my small place in a turbulent world, but coming from a standalone house in a rural lane in Northern Ireland, I can understand that feeling. The film captures it well here, and lets us do the work – there are no big flamboyant scenes of dialogue, but rather a distant longing touched on occasionally while the film spends most of its time silently observing. In this the film is strongest, as it looks beautiful – not in a 'wallpaper' sort of way, but in a way that draws the landscape into being a central character in the narrative. This works really well and makes the film more engaging, even as it has almost no dialogue or exposition.
I did have an issue with the conclusion though. On one hand it was a good ending because it left me with plenty to think about, but really it troubled me that the boy would just leave to an unknown which will certainly contain hardships, predators, and a hostile landscape – just a very different urban one from that which he is used to. I also did not like that his father was cast aside so easily – it seemed cold and unfair to both characters. That said, the film doesn't push the ending as a 'happy' one, nor does it show the lead boy displaying emotion one way or the other – he is on a journey, that is all.
Despite this (or maybe partly because of it) I did really enjoy the film for the narrative at its core, and how well it delivered it with deft touches and the use of location.
