Movie Review:
One Lucky Elephant (2010)
The Trick an Animal Cannot Learn: How to Be Wild Again
Flora and David Balding in “One Lucky Elephant,” a documentary about a relationship. By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: June 7, 2011 .
There’s no denying the “aww” appeal of a man and an elephant walking down a street, hand in trunk. That is one truth in “One Lucky Elephant,” a sweet, heart- and trunk-tugging, modestly sized documentary — except for its 10,000-pound title subject — about a circus man and the wild animal he foolishly bought, helped to train, loved like a (captive) daughter and finally, tearfully, tried to do right by, mostly by letting her go.When David Balding met Flora, the African elephant at the center of this drama and the former star of his St. Louis circus, she was a baby. Born in Zimbabwe in 1982, she was orphaned at 2, perhaps during what is called a culling, the polite word for the organized killing of animals for population control. As it sometimes is on the harder questions, the documentary tends to be frustratingly vague on Flora’s origins, though the Web site for Mr. Balding’s circus, circusflora.org, states that she was orphaned by ivory poachers. Whatever the case, he bought Flora when she was still shorter than he and before long had her trained to stand on her head and lie down for the one-ring circus he helped establish in 1987.
By the time Flora was a teenager, Mr. Balding, realizing that she would probably outlive him — African elephants can live up to 70 years — decided that he needed to find her a new home, no easy task. In 2000 Flora performed for the last time, an event documented by the director Lisa Leeman. (The filmmakers learned about the retirement through Miriam Cutler, the documentary’s co-producer. Ms. Cutler is the resident composer for Circus Flora and wrote the bouncy, whimsical score, suggestive of the cafe-jazz sound of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.) After immortalizing that final performance, the filmmakers kept shooting, tagging after Mr. Balding for the next decade during his long, difficult goodbye to Flora.read more at:http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/movies/one-lucky-elephant-documentary-opens-review.html?hpw
By the time Flora was a teenager, Mr. Balding, realizing that she would probably outlive him — African elephants can live up to 70 years — decided that he needed to find her a new home, no easy task. In 2000 Flora performed for the last time, an event documented by the director Lisa Leeman. (The filmmakers learned about the retirement through Miriam Cutler, the documentary’s co-producer. Ms. Cutler is the resident composer for Circus Flora and wrote the bouncy, whimsical score, suggestive of the cafe-jazz sound of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.) After immortalizing that final performance, the filmmakers kept shooting, tagging after Mr. Balding for the next decade during his long, difficult goodbye to Flora.read more at:http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/movies/one-lucky-elephant-documentary-opens-review.html?hpw
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