Luckily for the vulnerable fur ball, who is so small the desperate chirping sound he makes sounds more like a baby bird than a great and glorious cat, a man and his son manage not to hit him as they drive by in their car. They stop and catch the little guy, and since he’s clearly on his own, they take him home.

For all movie fans, the scene is an exhilarating example of what cinema can do. Movies are a visual medium - that’s a big “duh” - except that so many movies don’t trust the audience enough to really force them to watch what is happening. Duma is very spare with language and lets the pictures do the talking. And Duma - filled with cheetahs and other gorgeous animals, handsome humans and a spectacular variety of African landscapes - has a surfeit of material for knockout image after knockout image.

For fans of Duma director Carroll Ballard, the scene is a special delight. It echoes his best work in films like Never Cry Wolf, Fly Away Home and The Black Stallion. When I am asked to give a talk or recommendation about filmmaking to teachers that they can use with their students, my first choice is the extended silent sequence in The Black Stallion, when a boy and a horse become friends after surviving a shipwreck. In that movie and this one, you can’t help holding your breath hoping things work out well for the animals, that the humans will behave with as much dignity as the animals.

Ballard has a remarkable talent for mixing animals and people in movies. He doesn’t anthropomorphize the animals. He seems to bring out their animal personalities. I know that sounds ridiculous, and yet that’s how it feels to see animals in his films. Does he talk to the animals? I don’t know, but there are moments in Duma when you remember with a shock that - “that’s a real cheetah!”

Cheetahs are very affectionate, and one of the least aggressive big cats. I’m sure that helps in directing them. Several cheetahs were used in the film. People do, however inappropriately, keep them as pets. Still, seeing such an obviously wild creature interact so serenely with humans is wonderfully unnerving.

Duma is based on a true story of a boy and his cheetah, adapted for the screen from the book How It Was With Dooms. The book was written by Carol Chawthra Hopcraft. In Duma, Xan is played by Alex Michaeletos. Duma is his first film, and he gives a good, natural performance. Xan’s mother is played by Hope Davis. His father is played by Campbell Scott. Davis and Scott have shared the screen before as man and wife in The Secret Lives of Dentists. They make a handsome, happy couple.

Xan tells us in voice-over that, in Africa, if you give something a name you are responsible for its well-being. Xan’s mom picks the name Duma, the Swahili word for cheetah, and it seems to suit him. Though she picks the name, the whole family takes responsibility for Duma.

As Duma grows, we are treated to wonderful scenes of Duma, Xan and his dad racing around and enjoying life. In one particularly glorious scene, man and boy on a motorcycle race Duma. Xan is filming Duma run, and even at 90 mph Duma can outrun them. Cheetahs are the fastest animals on the planet. They go from zero to 60 in two seconds, “faster than your Porsche,” Xan tells his dad.

Duma is an old-fashioned family movie, the kind of movie that Hollywood gets criticized for not making anymore. The sad thing is that even when a studio makes a film like Duma they don’t seem to know what to do with it. Duma didn’t make much money in the major markets, so the studio didn’t give the film a national release. I think they could have done better by this film, but audiences have changed. too. I think audiences have as much a problem knowing what to do with an old-fashioned movie as studios do.

Old-fashioned family movies involve jeopardy, loss and suffering. In Duma, Xan’s father dies, and the family’s beautiful world is lost. Xan, struggling with change and grief, sets off with Duma to return him to his home, as his father insisted that they must someday. He meets a stranger named Ripkuna, played by Eammon Walker, and we’re not sure for some time if Xan should trust him. Xan and Duma aren’t safe on their journey.

There are none of the modern trappings that kids are used to and none of the condescending attitude. Xan is really a boy, not a miniature hipster with attitude. Mom and Dad aren’t selfish buffoons. The bush baby in Duma is a real animal, not an animated creation. He’s still a comic character, but it is different.

But because it is an old-fashioned movie, there is nothing ugly or vulgar in Duma. Kids from one to 92 can sit next to each other in the theater and not be embarrassed (except the susceptible among us will shed a tear or two) and that might embarrass the person next to you. There are no sudden shocks or stupid unmotivated actions. Duma is rated PG. Animals are killed, and bad things happen, but nothing is pushed in our face for effect.

Home, family, tradition, respect, love, memory and change are words that are used in Duma, but they aren’t strung together and used as a last-minute cover-up or a shallow empty excuse to sell popcorn. They are used as language should be used, an expression of what we understand through experience.

Xan saves Duma, and later Duma saves Xan, though not quite so literally. All the positive ideas noted above go into this simple formula, but Duma is most wonderfully, most simply about the friendship between a boy and a cheetah.