KUNDUN (69) (77 - second viewing)

Directed by: Martin Scorsese

Starring: Tenzin Thuthob Tsarong, Sonam Phuntsok, Robert Lin

The Pitch: The early life of the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet.

Theo Sez: Among the year's slipperiest movies (the rating keeps see-sawing in my mind the more I think about it, and - despite the compromise rating above - this could yet end up among my Films Of The Year) [NB. It did.], partly because it's hard to know where ethnography (not to say propaganda) ends and cinema begins. Certainly it starts inauspiciously, with a reverential opening caption and Tibetan peasants speaking like something out of THE GOOD EARTH, but then somehow it comes together, though it's hard to say exactly how (the images help, obviously) : it's a liquid, shape-shifting kind of film, devilishly hard to get a grip on - it's clearly capable of producing solid narrative and "money shots" (including the most memorable single image of recent years), yet it chooses not to. What's undoubtedly great is the way it's alive to political intrigue, the inevitability of human beings trying to one-up and destroy each other : sometimes, as the young Dalai Lama sits watching Hiroshima footage, or tries to keep up with the villains and manipulators around him (even in his own circle), the film seems almost to be turning into a warning against the foolishness of trying to espouse a non-violent philosophy in a violent world (the rejection of traditional humanist values - our hero's serene insistence that Mao is "just a man like us" turning out to be horribly naive - is even more of a shock). There's a schizophrenia here, Scorsese's impulse to paint a cynical world in bold, Manichean colours struggling against the meditative culture he's portraying - or perhaps the film's point is that only a child (which is what our hero is, and what certain Hollywood stars still seem to be) would believe in a "pure" Buddhism where everyone is tolerant and goodness is its own reward. If the film's final minutes mean anything it's surely that only one thing can approach true wisdom, and that (Socratically enough) is humility, knowing you're nothing but a poor reflection of God - which goes beyond both conflict-based Western religion and touchy-feely pseudo-Buddhism, to arrive at something that's actually quite moving. You could call it a spiritual film about the limits of spirituality ; though I'm not calling it anything till I've had a second viewing. (Which I've now had - confirming all of the above and emphasising its cinematic virtues even more incontestably ; bits of it are tedious, but the best of it is pure magic.) (Third viewing, May 2023, 25 years later! The rating should be lower now, probably 72-73, but I strongly suspect that's part of a general grade deflation that's taken place, i.e. it still feels about right in its placement on my Top 10 list, so I'm not going to change it. Beautiful 35mm print at the Cinemateket in Copenhagen (with just a handful of people in the audience), we all know celluloid feels different but it hits hard when you haven't seen it for a while. Comments on Letterboxd.)