The film-makers behind this Dalai Lama documentary should be cursing the timing of its launch, just after that video sullied his godlike standing as hero of world peace and image of Tibet’s resistance in opposition to China. Narrated with dignified gravitas by Hugh Bonneville, its promoting level is an interview with the Dalai Lama, talking on movie for the primary time about his escape from Tibet in 1959, aged 23. Although to be sincere, describing the encounter as an interview is pushing it. As of late, what you get with the rock star Nobel prize-winning non secular chief is an “viewers with the Dalai Lama”; the interviewer’s function is to sit down in rapt silence.
So, with a cheeky grin, the 87-year-old relates the story of his escape from Tibet. Rambling a little bit, he describes disguising himself as a soldier to slide out of his palace at midnight, sneaking previous Chinese language guards; his journey to freedom took two weeks, travelling throughout the Himalayas on foot at night time to achieve Dharamshala in India to arrange a government-in-exile. He’s chatting with British BBC journalist Rani Singh, whose uncle was an Indian official despatched to the deliver the Dalai Lama to security; the 2 males reunite on the finish.
The Dalai Lama teaches compassion within the face of Chinese language aggression. His youthful brother’s extra downbeat tackle the way forward for the Tibetan authorities in exile seems like a extra actual world evaluation. If the Tibetan presence in India turns into a thorn in relations between India and China, he says, “then I believe we’ve had it”. A human rights activist describes life for Tibetans now underneath Chinese language rule: having a photograph of the Dalai Lama in your telephone is sufficient to be despatched to jail.
In any other case this can be a scrappy movie: there’s an pointless part about Heinrich Harrer, the Austrian mountaineer who took the ultimate {photograph} of the Dalai Lama in free Tibet. Elsewhere it’s a bit soft-focus. Richard West, aka Mr C from the Shamen, weighs in on heal the world: the facility of artwork can “carry the flame” and make everybody “assume appropriately”. Chances are you’ll really feel you possibly can dwell with out these pearls of knowledge.
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