Seven Years In Tibet is a simple movie about a complicated topic. It is a Hollywood version of a story about a narcicistic mountain climber who finds peace through a friendship with the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet.
Brad Pitt stars as Heinrich Harrer, a famous German mountain climber who visits the Himilayas to conquer a peak as part of Germany's late 1930's propaganda machine. Along the trip he is captured by the English and interned in a prison camp in India. While the conditions are not too bad in the camp, he escapes and wanders the Himalayas for a couple of years before stumbling into the capital of Tibet.
It is here, in this city normally cut off from all foreigners, that he befriends the Dalai Lama as a child and teaches him western ways. It is a typical post-colonial fairy tale about what western society has to offer the rest of the world: cars and movie stars (literally).
This film tries very hard to be epic in scope. It also tries very hard to paint a sympathetic portrait of the Tibetans as they are crushed by Chinese invaders. Finally, it tries very hard to show the turmoil inside a man as he discovers that spirituality means more than worshipping his body as a temple.
It unfortunately fails in every attempt.
What we get is superb movie-of-the-week material full of Hollywood cliche's, stereotypes, and feel good endings that resolve nothing of the matter at hand. What little glimpse we get into the culture of Tibet is relegated mainly to the typical jokes about a backwards people's first glimpse at technology. (When they see their first movie all they can do is stand around and make shadow puppets.) The spirituality of the Dalai Lama is constrined to a couple of poor analogies bestowed upon Himmler and a tendancy of the people to be charitable.
The dialog is simple and uncluttered. There is no attempt to make the movie great nor action packed. The sole battle scene in the movie is heavily edited with special effects and fails in its attempt to bring out emotion in the viewer. The score to the film is self-conscious and frequently overburdens the imagery with a melodramatic feel and pace the film cannot keep up with.
What we end up with is a 2 hour long short story. Which is sad considering the possibilities behind the ture story and the book this film was based on. Interestingly left out of the film is the fact that our hero was a longstanding member of both the Nazi party and the SS while in Germany. Yet this film even has a scene where Harrer rejects his German citizenship to a fellow officer and rather claims "I'm not German, I'm Austrian." So much for a true story.
Brad Pitt should get some credit for playing his character unsympathetically. He offers no excuses for his actions and plays the egomaniac well. Unfortunately for him the writing and direction does not give us time to get to know him well enough to care nor even to get a glimpse inside of this man in supposedly in pain. There is a single moving scene in the film where Harrer realizes his brazen efforts at winning a female have failed. This side plot carried more truth and interest in it than the rest of the 139 minute film.
David Thewlis, who was superb in the otherwise horrid cult-hit Naked, has a demanding screen presense in his secondary role. He does well to combat Pitt's star quality and is perfect in doing what a sidekick should do in a movie without a real antagonist, give the star someone to play against.
Overall we have a film that either gave up halfway through shooting, or never aspired to be better than average. It is a textbook walk through a time in a man's life that is not profound nor realistic. The true stories here, about a man changing and a culture collapsing, are simply vehicles to get us to an ending.
The ultimate fault for this lies in the writing. This is a well meaning film created as a Hollywood story book. Such topics as this deserve a more thoughtful and careful examination rather than a once over with a 35 millimeter camera and a box of words.
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