Published by: World Tibet Network News Tuesday - October 7, 1997

Bloomington Herald Times

October 5, 1997

He sat back in His theater seat, nearly a half-hour before show time and laughed genuinely when asked whether he felt a sense of anticipation before seeing the film, "Seven Years in Tibet." "Oh, yes," retired Indiana University professor Thubten J. Norbu said warmly. "Yes. Yes. The good old days, you know." He continued to laugh, heartily, perhaps at His appropriation of a common American cliche, or maybe at the irony in His words. A pregnant pause followed, the laughter subsided and the smile drained from His face. "But you know," the 75-year-old Tibetan said, "I think it will be sad, too. Maybe very sad, I don't know." As it turned out, the film brought giddy chuckles and heaving, air-gulping sighs of emotion out of Norbu, the elder brother of the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet and close friend to the real-life protagonist of the movie, Heinrich Harrer.

To borrow another cliche: The film hit a little too close to home when Chinese machine gun fire began riddling Tibetan flesh. Conscious of the important political implications of "Seven Years in Tibet," Tri-Star Pictures worked with several Tibetan groups in the United States to provide pre-release screenings of the film before its general release this week. The showing last Thursday night in Indianapolis was arranged through the Indiana-based International Tibet Independence Movement. As good fortune would have it, the Indianapolis showing was the first in the country, and it drew a full-house crowd to the northside theater where it was screened. The film is based on the autobiographical book by Harrer, an Austrian Olympian and expert mountain climber, who participated in a 1939 Himalayan limb that first failed to reach its summit and then resulted in the team's capture by British forces in India once World War II had been declared.

Harrer and countryman Peter Aufschnaiter escape but are forced to undertake a near-impossible route to freedom across the Himalayan mountains through Tibet, an isolated country where Westerners were rarely seen. Eventually they reach the sacred city of Lhasa. The movie tells the tale of Harrer's relationship with the young Dalai Lama and the political upheaval that ensues when China invades the peace-loving country in 1950. With Brad Pitt portraying the intelligent, handsome and headstrong Harrer, "Seven Years in Tibet" tells the story gracefully, powerfully and accurately. At one point, for example, the young Dalai Lama receives a music box as a gift, and even though He is to the Tibetan people the reincarnation of the Buddhist God of Compassion, the boy can't keep his hands off of the wonderful contraption, giggling and sticking out His tongue like any delighted child.

Norbu leaned over from His seat in the movie theater Thursday and whispered: "It happened exactly like that!" After the film, He confirmed, "It was very nicely done. Not too Hollywood." Settings, such as the depiction of the grand Winter Palace at Lhasa were extraordinarily realistic, He said. No film can come close to acting out everything in any book of any length, however, and there is much in Harrer's original story that doesn't appear in "Seven Years in Tibet." Norbu declined to authorize His own characterization in the film because the producers would not provide Him with a script or any reasonable indication of how He would be portrayed. And so for better or worse, The Dalai Lama's brothers aren't mentioned, although their sister, Jetsun Pema, portrays their mother in her first acting role. In reality, Norbu and His brother, Lobsang Samnden, befriended the yellow-haired Austrian and took Harrer to their parents, which resulted in the young Dalai Lama's request to meet this strange-looking - to Tibetan

eyes - foreigner.

Norbu got to know Harrer very well, and like His younger brother, learned much about the greater world from the Austrian expatriate. "We made food and ate together, laughed together, we played games," Norbu recalled. "He was a very nice young man - he really was." In turn, Harrer taught Norbu and the Tibetans various Western activities, such as ice-skating and some rudimentary exercises. "He showed us how to do push-ups," Norbu recalled with a chuckle. "No one in Tibet had ever seen a push-up." The Tibetans also turned to Harrer for other help with the few Western items that made their way into the country. He read to them from Life and other magazines that had somehow found their way into Tibet. "We were always asking him for help with a broken watch or a clock or something like that. We'd say `Can you fix this?' and he usually could," Norbu said. "He always tried to help." Later, Harrer assisted Norbu to the extent that he is listed as the co-author of the former Buddhist Abbot and retired IU [Indiana Univ

ersity] professor's autobiography, "Tibet Is My Country."

While the Norbu family of Monroe County knew that the film "Seven Years In Tibet" was being made, they and a great many others were taken aback this summer when the German magazine Stern revealed that Harrer had been a member of the Nazi Party before that fateful 1939 expedition and the personal transformation that Harrer underwent afterward. "Only recently did I know that," Norbu said last week. "I know him and talked to him many times, so many times. He was like a family member, you know?" The revelation disturbs Norbu, but not greatly. "It was, what 50 years ago?" He asked. "It was before the war, you know. He was a young man. I have never known him to be anything but a kind man."

Norbu did not even know about the Nazi connection when He visited with Harrer this summer on a trip that also took him to Dharmsala, India, where The Dalai Lama remains the spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan people in exile. "Any time I see Heinrich, I enjoy it. He speaks such good Tibetan," Norbu said. "You know, I asked him, can you come to Bloomington when the movie comes out Oct. 10 and he said, no, thank you for your invitation. I thought he just didn't want to come but he told me the State Department wouldn't let him come because he was connected to the Nazi Party. "He was very emotional when he talked about such a thing," Norbu went on. "I said, `You were such a young man. The time is different. The circumstances are different. You are 85. I am 75. It was so long ago.'" The revelation, long a secret, pains the aging Austrian greatly, Norbu said. "I also feel sad," He admitted. "When he went to Tibet, it changed him. And it changed him forever. He is a good man. "I also told him, it is very

unfair, because what China is doing in Tibet is worse than what the Nazis did in Europe. How can they punish you when people continue to die in Tibet, every day?"