December 24, 1997

'Kundun': The Dalai Lama, Toddler to Grown Man, in Exile

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By STEPHEN HOLDEN

o call "Kundun" the most visually stunning religious storybook ever filmed is not to say it's a great movie. A glittering historical pageant infused with gorgeous, pulsing music by Philip Glass, this account of the early life of the 14th Dalai Lama unfolds like a sustained hallucination in the mind of its central character. But since the movie follows him only to 1959, when the occupying Chinese crushed a Tibetan revolt, forcing the region's political and spiritual leader to flee to India, it feels like the first chapter of a much larger, more complex historical drama.

With this film, composed of dazzling, beautifully framed imagery, billowing waves of music and few words, Martin Scorsese has come the closest he ever has to making a work of pure cinema. The movie is a triumph for the cinematographer Roger Deakins, who has given it the look of an illuminated manuscript. As its imagery becomes more surreal and mystically abstract, Glass's ethereal electronic score, which suggests a Himalayan music of the spheres, gathers force and energy and the music and pictures achieve a sublime synergy.

But "Kundun" also feels emotionally remote. For one thing, it is trying to capture a quality diametrically opposite from and far more elusive than the pure animality of the director's 1980 masterpiece "Raging Bull." Using four Tibetan actors to portray the Dalai Lama at different ages, the movie wants to distill the essence of holiness and create an idealized portrait of spiritual enlightenment in the context of 20th-century horrors that are only distantly observed. (Some of the movie's more evocative moments show the pre-adolescent Dalai Lama impassively watching a newsreel about the bombing of Hiroshima.)

Another reason that the film, as beautiful as it is, feels so remote is that the story concentrates on the Dalai Lama's youth; it sees the world through the eyes of a boy who has been pampered, sheltered and adored for most of his life while undergoing rigorous spiritual training. Although the character is shown weeping, he remains a mostly blank slate. Melissa Mathison's spare screenplay conveys some of the tenets of Tibetan Buddhism, including its belief in nonviolence and in reincarnation, but it never gets beyond the basics. Adding to the distance is the fact that the able Tibetan actors portraying the Dalai Lama, his family and advisers speak in careful, heavily accented English.

Probably only a filmmaker like Scorsese, a former Roman Catholic altar boy who once considered joining the priesthood, would have made a film like "Kundun." For the movie exhibits an awed fascination with the plumage and pageantry of religious ritual and is steeped in a churchlike atmosphere that feels as much Roman Catholic as Buddhist. As the camera contemplates the glittering gold robes worn by the young Dalai Lama perched on his throne, you feel a primitive longing to immerse yourself in the royal solemnity of it all, to try on those robes, and handle sacred artifacts that have the charged aura of magical jewels.

Historically, "Kundun" is a straightforward chronology that begins in 1937 with the Dalai Lama's discovery at the age of 2 1/2 in a Tibetan village near the Chinese border. Tenzin Gyatso, as he is named, already has a tendency toward a friendly imperiousness and an eerie sense of his destiny. Two years later, he is carried by caravan from his home to the capital city of Lhasa, where he begins his education and spiritual training. While the film touches on the ferocious power politics swirling around him, it sees them through the innocent eyes of a youth who is deliberately shielded from the harsher side of politics.

The boy has a mild rebellious streak that expresses itself at one point in his devouring of foods (pork and eggs) that are off-limits. During a religious ceremony, he is more interested in watching a rat lap at a dish of holy water than in praying.

The story is told in blocs that jump forward in time, with a new actor replacing his predecessor at the beginning of each new chapter. When first made aware of the Chinese Communists' threat to Tibet, the boy writes a sweetly naive letter to President Harry Truman asking for help that is not forthcoming. When China declares Tibet to be part of China and invades the region, hopes that some sort of accommodation can be achieved fade quickly.

In the film's most jarring sequence, the boy, now a teen-ager, travels to Beijing for a meeting with Mao Zedong, whom Robert Lin plays as a shrill, campy caricature. Their initial rapport dissolves when Mao calls him back and derisively shouts Marx's slogan about religion being the opiate of the people. When the boy returns to Lhasa, it is only a matter of time before he finds himself in mortal danger and flees in disguise to sanctuary in India.

His sorrowful exodus from Tibet is by far the most touching part of the film as well as its most cinematically ambitious. As Glass's score accelerates, the imagery becomes increasingly abstract and surreal. The most astonishing moment is an overhead pull-away shot of the Dalai Lama standing in the middle of an endlessly widening sea of slaughtered Tibetan monks. It inevitably recalls the famous crane shot in "Gone With the Wind" showing wounded soldiers on the streets of Atlanta. The film's final image -- the young Dalai Lama's longing backward look at the snowcapped peaks of the land he has been forced to flee -- is charged with majesty and poignancy.

It's all very beautiful, not to mentioned high-minded. But the loftiness comes at a sacrifice. For "Kundun" doesn't really have characters (the boy's family, tutors and advisers are stick figures and Mao a cartoon), and its history is sketchy. In imagining an exalted Buddhist version of a personal road not taken, Scorsese has made a film that is as much a prayer as it is a movie.

PRODUCTION NOTES:

'KUNDUN'

Directed by Martin Scorsese; written by Melissa Mathison; director of photography, Roger Deakins; edited by Thelma Schoonmaker; music by Philip Glass; production designer, Dante Ferretti; produced by Barbara De Fina; released by Touchstone Pictures.

Cast: Tenzin Thuthob Tsarong (Adult Dalai Lama), Gyurme Tethong (Dalai Lama, age 12), Tulku Jamyang Kunga Tenzin (Dalai Lama, age 5), Tenzin Yeshi Paichang (Dalai Lama, age 2), Tencho Gyalpo (Dalai Lama's mother), Tsewang Migyur Khangsar (Dalai Lama's father), Robert Lin (Mao Zedong), Lobsang Samten (Master of the Kitchen), Tenzin Trinley (Ling Rinpoche), Gyatso Lukhang (Lord Chamberlain), Sonam Phuntsok (Reting Rinpoche) and Tsewang Jigme Tsarong (Taktra Rinpoche).

Running time: 128 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.

Rating: "Kundun" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has brief flashes of violence.