Kundun (1997)

It's been a while since I've watched "Kundun", and unfortunately I didn't have time to write a fresh entry. So, we'll deal with one a bit more stale, but somethin' is better than nothin'.

The movie, directed by Martin Scorsese, relates the history of the last living Dalai Lama since his early childhood up o the exile in India forced by the Chinese troops invading Tibet. It's debatable how well the movie presents the main points of Dalai Lama's ruling as the de facto leader of the second largest Chinese province. It's also debatable what connection you can draw, in the sense of "history repeats itself", between what happened more than 60 years ago in the far east and what happens now in the closer east. But this is not a blog for politics :) So, thinking on some of the latest more or less controversial positions expressed by a man that got through most of his life, probably it's more important to get to live in peace and harmony with the people around you indiferent of their urge for singing whatever national anthem. So, let's keep things peaceful and get back to the movie.

It's neither the best, nor the worst film made by Scorsese. It's definitely not on par with Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor", but it has its own merits and some distinct nuances still raising it to the level of a classic epic movie. First of all, I don't know if there's any known name in the entire cast. On the contrary, there are quite a few actors for whom this was their only movie in their cinematographic career. I'm not sure how Scorsese worked here = how many are amateurs, how many are stage actors, etc - but there's nothing to complain in the end. Besides Dalai Lama, we have some other characters with relatively consistent parts, like the chancellor for example, an excellent actor who in his real life is actually a tibetan painter. The cinematography of Roger Deakins and the minimalistic score of Philip Glass transform the movie in a visually-audible jewel. There are movie with a good subject, but where you have moments when you just drop out of the story, just to better sense some seconds or minutes of camera work mixed with sound. That's what I like to call "cinema movies", because there you get the max effect out of this. Well, getting over all the small issues in the story, maybe some lightness in dealing with a heavy subject here and there, and an ending that's a bit abrupt, for me "Kundun" remains a "cinema movie" - and there are less and less that provide this feeling.

Rating: 4 out of 5