| Subject: Hello, Dalai! |
Author:
Kendun
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Date Posted: 01:12:23 12/22/02 Sun
(I thought it might be a bit off-topic for the thread that spawned them, so I am responding to John's questions to me about mediTation and Kundun in this new thread.)
>Ken, your reminder for meditation is a good one. Yes,
>it helps immensely.
Great. I have found I can fall asleep almost instantly with some simple mental relaxation.
>Kundun certainly isn't a cinematic masterpiece, but is
>well worth taking the time to see.
Agreed. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
>I think very few
>people have any understanding of who the Dalai Lama is
>and what his world was like. Kundun illustrates that
>very well. Does it ultimately fail? I don't think so,
>although the subject matter sets the expectation bar
>rather high. Only so much can be covered in a film of
>conventional length. I think it invites the viewer to
>learn more about the Dalai Lama, the history of Tibet,
>and Buddhism.
Oh, yes. I agree. And certainly, the expectation bar was high. But I was intrigued much more so than I was satisfied.
>I'm interested to hear your opinion of this film. What
>didn't work for you? What would you have done
>differently? What were the short comings?
I sensed that Kundun had exquisite reasons for exercising such forbearance, but as a novice to Buddhism, I was at a loss to understand these reasons. I gather there was a great deal of internally consistent religious and philosophical thinking which drove him, and yet very little of this is evident in the film. He seemed to dither, procrastinate, wring his hands in self-doubt and puzzle over moral dilemmas. He engages in apparently ineffective behavior, reacting rather than acting, and then, at length, is finally convinced to flee his home, never to return. The inner strength of a man like the Dalai Lama I had hoped to observe seemed to be nowhere in evidence. Near the end, I started singing "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by The Clash because he was depicted as being incapable of making up his mind on the matter. Rather than focusing on the complexity of the dilemma itself, the film ends up portraying him as indecisive. Perhaps this reveals my Western prejudices, I don't know. I am only a bug.
>As for Mr. Glass, I'm definitely not a fan. The music
>for Kundun wasn't as relentless and domineering as his
>other works, so it didn't ruin the film for me.
I thought it was appropriately exotic-sounding, but it tended to the overbearing at times.
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