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Mongolian Ping Pong
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List Price: $29.95
Our Price: $26.99
Your Save: $ 2.96 ( 10% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: FIRST RUN FEATURES
Starring: Hurichabilike, Geliban, Badema, Yidexinnaribu, Dawa (II)
Directed By: Hao Ning
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0720229912341
Format: Color
Label: FIRST RUN FEATURES
Manufacturer: FIRST RUN FEATURES
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: FIRST RUN FEATURES
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2006-10-24
Running Time: 102
Studio: FIRST RUN FEATURES
Theatrical Release Date: 2005
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Editorial Reviews:
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A ping pong ball, found floating in a stream, becomes the source of wonderment for three young boys who live in the remote grasslands of Mongolia, a magnificent landscape little changed since the time of Genghis Khan. Bilike, the ball's discoverer, assumes it's a bird's egg. His wizened grandmother proclaims it a magic pearl. Unconvinced, the boys take the ball to the monastery, but even the grasslands' most knowledgeable inhabitants are stumped. When a television show (seen on the region's only set) reveals that the object is the "national ball of China," the determined young scouts decide to embark upon a journey to return the precious talisman to the Chinese capital
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Incredibly boring
Comment: I like slice of life foreign films but this one has virtually no redeeming qualities, save, endless views of remote flat grasslands of Mongolia. The characters are hardly fleshed out, there is nothing enduring, charming, enlightening or even mildly amusing, ironic, or funny.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not entirely successful, but still a film with many things to enjoy. If only the storyline weren't so passive
Comment: Mongolian Ping Pong (Lu Cao Di) is a sweet-natured movie with almost no narrative strength or rhythm. One critic said that it was such slow going that it might have little appeal to Western audiences. I'm willing to speculate that it might have little appeal to most Eastern audiences. There is much to like about the movie, but those things are cast in a structure that is so placid that it is difficult to stay very interested. This isn't an audience weakness among those who prefer some movement; it is a basic structural weakness the director has given to his story.
And the story? A seven-year-old Chinese Mongolian boy, Bilike, who lives with his family and friends in small yurts away from the cities tending their sheep, one day makes a wondrous discovery. Floating in a stream is a small white ball. He's never seen anything like it. He thinks at first it might be a strange bird's egg. His aged grandmother tells him it is a magic pearl. We know it is a ping-pong ball. How it got to this place of vast grasslands we never learn. Then over the static of the family's television, Bilike learns that ping-pong is the national sport and the ping-pong ball is the national ball. He has no real idea of what ping-pong is, but now is convinced that he and his two friends must bring the national ball to Beijing. They set out on two horses and a moped. The result is a couple of strong spankings, a friendship which is sorely tested, a Solomon-like decision by two fathers on the fate of the ball...and then it's time for Bilike to go away to school in a distant city.
There is much to enjoy about the movie. All the actors appear to be non-professionals (although Bilike's mother is played by Badema, the woman who played the young Mongolian wife in Close to Eden almost 17 years ago). We don't see much of them except for the three boys, but they bring an unaffected naturalness to their roles. The boys all are matter-of-fact and serious in their endeavors. The photography is fine with great vistas of grassland sweeping on to the horizon. The life of Bilike's family is interesting...making leather from sheep skins, sipping tea - and that American tea called coffee - inside the yurt in the evening, improvising an antenna for TV reception, visits by a health worker for inoculations, the look of the yurts, warm and colorful with rugs on the floor and hangings on the sides.
But there is only the sketchiest of narrative storyline. The movie is half over before the boys learn about the national ball and set out to cross the Gobi desert to Beijing. We witness incidents and relationships which all have a kind of directorial passiveness. Ning Hao, the director, isn't afraid to keep his camera going for a moment or two longer than many directors would. This isn't a bad thing, except he uses this device as a continuing technique. After awhile it has the effect of deadening us to the anticipation that there might be something we should be observing.
Still, there is the matter of the ending. (Some might consider what follows a spoiler.) The title for this final chapter is "New Ground Upon Which Knowledge Grows." Bilike is at his school watching an outdoor performance of other students. He excuses himself to go to the bathroom. On the way he stops and listens outside a large, yellow-brick building. We can faintly hear popping sounds. Bilike enters, listens at a closed door and then opens the door. We can clearly hear odd, rhythmic popping sounds as the camera stays focused on Bilike's seven-year-old face. He observes what we can't see. No, he has not found the place at school where little boys are turned into ping-pong balls. It's a sweet end to Bilike's story, and it might lead to who knows what for Bilike. Still, like the movie, it is so under-played you might miss the enticing significance.
I enjoyed the movie the same way I enjoy most films that show a way and a rhythm of life that's different from our own. Mongolian Ping Pong, however, is placid to a fault. Others I enjoyed more are such films as Himalaya, The Way Home, The Fast Runner, The Story of the Weeping Camel and Close to Eden. None of them are perfect, but each in its own way tells a more composed story.
The DVD transfer is fine but not exceptional. There are a handful of extras, including the printed thoughts of the director. Unfortunately, the type is just small enough to be unpleasant to read. The movie's subtitles are white with a black edge that helps with legibility.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mongolia today
Comment: More than anything else, this is a superior portrait of life in Mongolia today--a culture combining the same yurts (grassland domestic dwellings) used a thousand years ago with the occasional TV and motor scooter. Folks still get around on horseback (the film was shot in 2003-04), and still wear pretty much the same kind of clothes today they did centuries ago--with the odd baseball cap here and there!
Three young boys take off on a journey from somewhere in the wilds of the Mongolian grasslands to attempt to return the "national ball" of China--a ping pong ball one of them finds floating in a stream--to Beijing, its proper home, or so they think. The only way they know it's the "national ball" of China is because they've been able to hear (not see) this pronouncement on a TV set whose reception's confined to sound only, during the broadcast of a national ping pong match in Beijing.
Mongolia is still part of China. Once the proud origin of Genghis Khan--whom natives still honor and pay homage to--it's now the home of people who live simple lives herding sheep and bartering with the occasional "traveling salesman" who drives by in a beat up pick-up truck.
Much has been made of the film being a sort of Mongolian version of The Gods Must Be Crazy, as well as a cinematic work capturing the innocence of childhood. But for my money, it's a great depiction of a part of the world rarely, if ever, seen by Westerners. Lensed by a Chinese filmmaker, Hao Ning, it's a terrific view of life lived so removed from what the typical American is used to, it's worth it just to see the film for this reason.
While it's true that for the most part, this is seen from the perspective of the young boys, there are more than a few scenes that veer away from that perspective--the traveling salesman trying to woo one of the boy's older pretty sister; the father trying to construct a second house; the grandmother singing the same song repeatedly. The occasional references to Western civilization--the father glancing through a Chinese version of Elle magazine, for example--really highlight the vast and intriguing cultural differences.
Highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "the ball of our nation"
Comment: This film about three boys--Bilike, Dawa, and Erguotou --and family life on the endless, windswept Mongolian steppe might be the most feel-good, family-friendly, and culturally exotic movie you could watch this year. The stunning scenery alone makes the film worth watching, as does the window onto their fascinating family life. When Bilike finds a ping pong ball floating in a stream near his tent-home, it becomes both a mysterious talisman to protect and an exotic treasure to envy. No one can tell him what it is. His parents have no idea, nor do the Buddhist monks, while his grandmother says it's a "glowing pearl" from the river spirits. When their father finally gets a TV signal with his antenna of beer cans and metal saucers, they learn from watching ping pong on TV that the artifact is "the ball of our nation." What to do? The fate of the ping pong ball and the disruption it causes among the boys, their friends, and family, form the plot of this movie. It will remind some viewers of The Gods Must Be Crazy about a coke bottle thrown from a plane that is discovered by a bushman in the Kalahari desert, and The Story of the Weeping Camel which also takes place in the Gobi desert. In Mongolian with English subtitles.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A must see
Comment: Terrific film that more than anything else shows the scale of Mongolia, there is something moonlike about it, as if the traveling tinker's truck crossing the grasslands is a rover traveling across the crust of the moon. The very last scene telesopes the whole movie.
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