The Cave of the Yellow Dog
From the start of the film, I noticed how their religion is different from my own. With Mongolian culture, they believe in the eternal cycle of reincarnation. Nansal’s father starts off the film talking about an animal being reincarnated since it has died; Nansal’s father tells her, “Put the tail under his head to be reborn as a person with a ponytail.”
Home life for Nansal’s family is different from what the typical American family looks like. Nansal is sent for an extended amount of time for school; “You have grown so much,” says her mother. The film begins with Nansal returning from school and telling her father she has learned a lot from school. After explaining some lessons to her father, he tells her to go teach her little sister. Nansal also wears a specific uniform for school and her mother will make her new one before she will return to school.
Nansal’s family home is not permanent; her father is a herdsman and they live a nomadic life. We are able to see how a typical day is carried out. Nansal does a lot of work for her age. She helps when she is asked and mostly watches and plays with her younger siblings while her mother does household duties. Her father is in charge of the livestock, and the problem he is dealing with in the film is wolves are killing several of his sheep. He has to skin the sheep right away and take them to the market to be sold. Nansal takes over her father’s duties herding the sheep on a horse while he is away. Nansal knows how to use direction and the landmarks as her guide to lead the sheep. When Nansal does not come back after a while and the sheep return without her, her mother leaves the two youngest to go search for her, having the second eldest daughter in charge of her toddler brother. This situation would have been handled very differently in American culture; a girl Nansal’s age would not have been able to leave adults on a horse in the first place to do big duties such as herding the sheep...
