Published by: World Tibet Network News Sunday, December 28, 1997

Source: cinmania@microsoft.com.

Review By: Richard T. Jameson

Biography / Drama PG-13

After such airless projects as Cape Fear and Casino, even Martin Scorsese's greatest devotees felt that he needed to bust out of the violent-genre straitjacket and breathe free. Kundun marks the occasion of that release. It not only takes Scorsese out of the lunar hell of Casino's Las Vegas (or any other American venue) and turns him loose in a diametrically opposed setting "physically and metaphysically" on the other side of the world, it's given him the license to explore an entirely new way of telling a story, and to invest the framing and orchestration of screen imagery with a freshness and vitality that virtually re-creates the world anew.

We've all seen a raft of historical epics, ranging from the pomposity of the papier-mache Hollywood variety to the political and psychological complexity of Bertolucci's The Last Emperor. Kundun has almost nothing in common with any of them. Scorsese dispenses with sententious forewords and narration, dispenses even with explicit acknowledgment that the story begins here, or that X amount of time or distance separates one scene from another. Indeed, in the dreamlike flow of Kundun, one scene rarely is separated from another. Image succeeds image "and intricate, heartbreakingly evanescent sand paintings succeed or anticipate ravishingly lit and composed shots (cinematography by Roger Deakins)"; in an endlessly renewable rapture.

The film begins with the scurrying survey of a mud-brick home on a barren plateau. The camera insinuates its way around corners, peers into cracks and crannies, the way a child discovers the world he lives in. A 2-year-old boy awakes to wonder, but without questioning the wondrousness of it, since that is simply childhood's natural condition. To the familiar complement of beaming parents and relatives is added a party of men come on horseback from somewhere over the horizon. They spread objects on a table and observe as the boy examines them. To him, it's a game; to them, a test. In the patterns of his curiosity they read confirming signs: He is Kundun, the reincarnate Buddha of Compassion, and the future religious and political leader of his nation.

Like Scorsese's 1988 The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun is also mindful of the political intrigues and power struggles that surround the journey toward enlightenment. But Scorsese wisely eschews any attempt to fill us in on the centuries-old history of relations between Tibet and its giant neighbor to the northeast. And when it comes, the Chinese invasion is conveyed without recourse to cast-of-thousands battle scenes. Yet you'll never forget image of blood polluting a goldfish pond, or the ascending crane shot of the Dalai Lama standing among an (imagined) sea of slaughtered monks in saffron robes.

So Kundun is an epic with a difference, an intimate epic, and a truly visionary film. It's also a suffusingly joyous experience. Kundun is the only serene hero Scorsese has ever given us. And in its sensuous delights and exhilarating reinvention of cinema itself, Kundun suggests nothing so much as a personal tribute to Scorsese's great friend and mentor Michael Powell. It is not irreverent to propose that this is Martin Scorsese's Thief of Bagdad.

Review Date: December 23, 1997