SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET (55)

Directed by: Jean-Jacques Annaud

Starring: Brad Pitt, David Thewlis, B. D. Wong

The Pitch: The story of Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian mountaineer who spent several years - including the titular seven - wandering round the Himalayas, prevented from going home by WW2.

Theo Sez: Approximately one-half of a splendid old-fashioned adventure story in MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON or MAN WHO WOULD BE KING vein - the exotic wanderings of a hugely ambivalent hero, a spiky, arrogant bastard full of aggression and impatience, played by Pitt with a panoply of superior sneers and the predatory grace of a panther, or perhaps the heel-clicking crispness of a Gestapo officer. That Harrer's Nazi affiliations are otherwise glossed over, not to say repudiated (he dismisses his Olympic title as unimportant and holds a Nazi flag with the glum forbearance of a sulky teenager) is a bad omen, borne out when the film finally gets to Tibet - a land where the women look like models, enemy officials are expelled with heartfelt wishes for "a happy return to your homeland", everyone is too gentle and peace-loving even to dig up land for fear of injuring the worms, and (in explicit contrast to our Western notions of "success") what they admire is "a man who abandons his ego". That our hero's mellowed by this idyllic place, loses his belligerence and Gets In Touch with his feelings, is a no-brainer - but it's still mind-boggling to see the hoary old clichés trotted out so unapologetically, or the Chinese invaders portrayed so simplistically as dyed-in-the-wool villains (a visiting Chinese general is shown a "mandala", a deeply symbolic kind of sand-mosaic, being painstakingly assembled - and casually stamps on it as he walks past!). It entirely lacks the sophistication of KUNDUN in examining how pacifism can work (or not) in a situation where aggression is required : the Tibetans, it's implied, would quite happily have fought off the invaders had they not been stabbed in the back by a sneaky, lily-livered traitor - but how can he be betraying his culture if he's trying to avoid conflict? Superficial stuff, though pictorially it's beautiful (or at least spectacular) and the friendship between Harrer and the young Dalai Lama is rather sweet (albeit hampered by a heavy-handed parallel between the boy and our hero's own lost son) ; it's perhaps under-rated, though you can see why - the propaganda tends to overshadow the more entertaining aspects. Not a film to think about ; still, it's good for a few yaks.