Mongolian teenager wins her doubters over in triumph-over-the-odds story
REVIEW: While the Eagle Huntress is classified as a documentary, the film follows the formula of a Hollywood screenplay so closely.
New Movies
Don't miss out on the headlines from New Movies. Followed categories will be added to My News.
THE EAGLE HUNTRESS
Three and a half stars
Director: Otto Bell
Starring: Aisholpan Nurgaiv, Rys Nurgaiv
Rating: G
Running time: 82 minutes
Verdict Raw inspiration
“WE want to be eagle huntresses too,” says one of the title character’s classmates, pausing for effect.
“But we are afraid of eagles.”
The girls erupt in to a fit of giggles.
Most of us would like to imagine ourselves as trailblazers, but only a chosen few have what it takes to deliver.
Thirteen-year-old Aisholpan Nurgaiv is certainly one of them.
With her rosy cheeks and beribboned plaits, she looks like an average Kazakh schoolgirl — until you see her out on Mongolian steppes with her father, or nestling under the wing of her beloved eagle as she feeds it scraps of raw meat.
“Eagles demand courage and respect,” says one old timer, affronted by the idea of a young woman muscling in on his male-only domain.
Aisholpan exhibits the first quality in spades when she snatches her very own eaglette — her father lowers her over the side of the mountain so she can raid the nest at exactly the right moment (when the eagle is strong enough to survive on its own but not yet able to fly.)
She earns the latter, slowly and surely, over the course of this film — meeting each new challenge with quiet tenacity. (And each success with a triumphant sparkle in the eye.)
Aisholpan’s success at the annual Eagle Hunting Competition is almost too easily won — in narrative terms, at least.
“That’s interesting for tourists,” says one member of the eagle hunting fraternity, dismissively, in the wake of her record-breaking performance.
By the final sequence, in which she and her father hunt foxes in the frozen Altai Mountains, even he will be eating his words.
“It’s not unheard of for a horse to slide off the edge of a cliff,” says Aisholpan’s father in a voice-over (this guy knows how to spin a yarn — but as father and daughter’s horses slide precariously across the ice, you don’t doubt him for a minute).
“Temperatures can drop below minus 40 degrees. Basically, we freeze.”
Narrated by another singular woman, Rebel Alliance fighter and occasional Millennium Falcon pilot Daisy Ridley, this is an uplifting tale of a young woman who trains to become the first female in 12 generations of her Kazakh family to become an eagle hunter.
The jaw-dropping backdrop threatens to upstage both the human players and their barely-domesticated birds of prey.
If I have one quibble, it’s the classification of The Eagle Huntress as a documentary. The film follows the formula of a Hollywood screenplay so closely, you can’t help but wonder whether some of the material hasn’t been tweaked.
The Eagle Huntress opens on Thursday (March 16)
Originally published as Mongolian teenager wins her doubters over in triumph-over-the-odds story
‘We can bury anyone’: Alleged campaign to ruin Blake Lively
New court documents accuse actor Justin Baldoni of unleashing the public relations dark arts to destroy co-star Blake Lively’s reputation. Here’s how it allegedly unfolded.
Aussie star on new Christmas flick How to Make Gravy
Actor Brenton Thwaites hit the big time with Maleficent, Titans and Pirates of the Caribbean, but says a new Australian Christmas classic made him appreciate life at home.