Published by: World Tibet Network News Thursday, December 18, 1997

by David Ansen,

Newsweek, December 22, 1997

If it's ravishing filmmaking you want, search no further than "Kundun," Martin Scorsese's visually exquisite account of the early years of the 14th Dalai Lama, driven into exile from Tibet in 1959 when the Chinese invaded his country.

Except for the fact that it unfolds in a world of men, this would seem a departure for Scorsese. His hero (played by four different Tibetan nonprofessional actors) is the anti-Raging Bull-- a man serenely devoted to the principles of non-violence. This passivitiy creates a formidable challenge for screenwriter Melissa Mathison, for her protagonist is largely devoid of the internal conflict that is the staple of drama.

But "Kundun" doesn't take a novelistic approach. Think of it as an epic poem, in which Scorsese's swirling, headlong baroque camera searches paradoxically for the stillness at the meditative heart of Buddhism.

This is not a movie for those who crave plot: at times it gets becalmed in the merely ceremonial. The heartfelt, uncompromising "Kundun" is at it's greatest in the magically subjective scenes of childhood and in the stunning and moving final act, when the young Dalai Lama must escape in disguise to the Indian border, and past, present and future become one in Scorsese's impassioned eye.