KUNDUN (1997)
Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 4.0) ******************************** Key to rating system: 2.0 stars - Debatable 2.5 stars - Some people may like it 3.0 stars - I liked it 3.5 stars - I am biased in favor of the movie 4.0 stars - I felt the movie's impact personally or it stood out ********************************* A Movie Review by David Sunga
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Written by: Melissa Mathison
Starring: Tenzin Yeshi Paichang, Tulku Jamyang Kunga Tenzin, Gyurme Tethong, Tenzin Thuthob Tsarong, Tenzin Trinley, Tencho Gyalpo
Ingredients: Tibet, Tibetan music, Tibetan mountains, Tibetan costumes, Tibetan villagers, Dalai Lama
Synopsis: KUNDUN is the pictorial biography of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, who is still alive today (but exiled and living in India since the Chinese military takeover of Tibet). The Dalai Lama is the religious leader of Tibet. Tibetans revere him as the fourteenth reincarnation of a compassionate holy man. KUNDUN traces the Dalai Lama's life story from 'pampered tot in training' to exiled leader.
Opinion: 1. The cinematography in KUNDUN is priceless and extraordinary. 2. The plot is so unnecessary you can turn off the dialogue and replace it with music. 3. The music says 'Tibet' but is a bit repetitive and is suspenseful in the wrong places. 4. Tencho Gyalpo does a superb supporting job as the Dalai Lama's mother. 5. KUNDUN is an unconventional spiritual film with searing cinematography.
In my hometown there was once a murder (where a dorky middle-aged guy living with his wife in a cheap house killed her because she found out he was involved with the mob. Hollywood turned it into a TV movie). They portrayed the dorky balding guy as confident, muscular, square-jawed and handsome. And they portrayed his nagging potbellied wife as a sultry, hot seductive blond babe. The Hollywood-ized version of the story turned their shabby roadside shack into a sprawling Beverly Hills countryside mansion. But that's the way Hollywood movies are. They dramatize and glamorize, trying to offer us better looking versions of ourselves doing exaggerations of normal life.
What if movies didn't do this? Then they might turn out like KUNDUN. KUNDUN takes the opposite approach. Instead of giving us a glitzy, schlocky 1990s Hollywood version of Tibet, with a slick plot, and charming Beverly Hills guys and gals, KUNDUN gives us Tibet, in all its peculiar timelessness. It plunges us into a weird kaleidoscope world of ice-capped mountains and swirling robes and reincarnation where time doesn't exist and neither do stories. KUNDUN is like opening a religious photo album and seeing pictures come to life: individual grains of falling sand; a holocaust-like dream scene of hundreds of dead monks clad in red; a young bespectacled man looks wistfully through a car window. With no big emphasis on plot, we in the audience are left to ask ourselves what it all means in the grand scheme of things. Which is probably just what Martin Scorsese, the director of KUNDUN, intended. Remarkably, the entire film is a metaphor meant to mirror the mentality of Tibetan Buddhist meditation.
This makes KUNDUN the cinematic equivalent of staring at the Grand Canyon. There are only two possible outcomes. Either you'll wonder why you should stare for two hours when the film apparently doesn't move the way 'normal' films do. Or you'll be awed by the fantastic visuals and emerge with a deeper sense of spirituality.
Reviewed by David Sunga January 18, 1998
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