Published by: World Tibet Network News Saturday, January 10, 1998

USA Today, January 12, 1998

By Bob Minzesheimer

NEW YORK - Martin Scorsese was 4 when his mother took him to see King Vidor's classic Western Duel in the Sun, which had been condemned by the Catholic Church.

"'Lust in the Dust,' they dubbed it," Scorsese says. "I guess she used me as an excuse to see it herself." Fifty-one years later, he still recalls how he was mesmerized by it.

Now Scorsese has directed Kundun, a chaste and contemplative account of the early life of the Dalai Lama. It begins when he is 2, recognized, as Buddhists say, as the 14th reincarnation of the Buddha of Compassion. It ends when he is 24, driven into exile from Tibet by the Chinese.

Is it an Eastern?

The director of GoodFellas and Raging Bull laughs at the question and replies, "I guess so, but it does have horses in it."

But it has little action (at least by Western standards) and no stars (most of the cast are Tibetans and nonactors, including the Dalai Lama's niece). It may even be Disney's most noncommercial commercial movie. It opened Christmas Day in Los Angeles and New York to respectful reviews and spreads to 50 other cities Friday.

Kundun, The Presence, as Tibetans call their Dalai Lamas, is a study in nonviolence, as revolutionary in Hollywood as it is in international politics. Scorsese warns would-be audiences, "If you're looking for comedy or enjoyable action adventure, then wait until you're in the mood for something different."

Such as? "To be immersed in another world, to be taken on a ride filled with mystery," he says. "It's not a traditional lineal narrative. There's a story. There's a thread. But it's an emotional and spiritual thread."

As a misbehaving class clown (his description) at a Catholic high school in the Bronx, Scorsese dreamed of becoming a priest, but for all the wrong reasons, he says. "I was attracted to the trappings of religion, as opposed to the hard, hard work of living a religious life."

Film as religion

The church's loss was Hollywood's gain. When he was attacked for what fundamentalists and others considered a sacrilegious The Last Temptation of Christ, based on Nikos Kazantzakis' novel, Scorsese shot back, "My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else."

Or, as he puts it in a new book based on a BBC documentary, A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (Hyperion, $40), "I don't really see a conflict between the church and the movies, the sacred and the profane. . . . Both are places for people to come together and share a common experience. I believe there is a spirituality in films, even if it's not one which can supplant faith."

Kundun, Scorsese's most spiritual film, was written by Melissa Mathison (E.T.'s screenwriter), who joined the Dalai Lama on a retreat in California, gaining his help and approval.

"Once we had the Dalai Lama's imprimatur, so to speak," Scorsese says, "we felt OK." And that reminds him of working with prizefighter Jake La Motta, the bull in Raging Bull, portrayed by Robert De Niro:

"Once Bob and I finished the fight scenes, Bob tried to explain to Jake, 'Now we're doing the dramatic scenes, and in a sense we don't need your input any more. We've made a kind of an impression of you.' Jake said, 'Yeah, I know. I should leave now.' "

Scorsese laughs at the memory, then adds, "Not in so many words, but that's the feeling we got from the Dalai Lama," who, Scorsese says, understood Kundun was to be an impression, not a documentary.

At one point in the film, the Dalai Lama, seeking peace with China, says, "Buddhism and socialism have a lot in common." Scorsese says the real Dalai Lama, reading the script, pointed out, "It's not that simple, but the general idea is right." The line stayed in, Scorsese says, "because we have only two hours. We don't have 10 years, you understand?"

The Scorsese way

In contrast to Kundun's gentle pacing, a Scorsesian conversation rumbles along like the subway trains of his native New York, slowing only for an occasional "you understand?" or "you see?" - less questions than punctuation. Then he's off again, headed to the next idea.

On the concept of action: "It's a Western thing. We think of the hero going into battle, rebelling against a government or an oppressor, but here (in Kundun) action is nonaction or what appears to be nonaction. That's a hard concept for Western audiences. . . . We wanted to show a kind of moral action, a spiritual action, an emotional action. Some people will pick up on it; some won't."

On making a political movie: "Obviously it has a political backdrop, but we try not to batter the audience down with politics or with history or batter them with Buddhism either. We wanted to make a story about a young boy who develops into a young man with this incredible responsibility."

And on authoritarian Chinese officials (who consider Tibet part of "the motherland" and threatened to retaliate against Disney for producing Kundun): "There's something wrong when Tibetan people could be jailed and tortured and maybe even killed for carrying a picture of the Dalai Lama. Are these the kind of people we want to be trading with? The answer is, well, when it comes to the marketplace, sure. (He laughs.) Want to make money? Yeah! But there's another point: China is too big and too important. It can't be ignored."

Violence revisited

Human rights groups estimate that a fifth of Tibet's population has died because of China's policies. Kundun's violence comes in short bursts, mostly in the Dalai Lama's dreams. Blood pours into his beloved fish pond. At another point, the camera rises slowly to reveal an entire field of massacred monks.

The director known for the bloody climax of Taxi Driver now says, "If you want to see violence, just look out in the street or turn on the TV. We've become inured to it." In Kundun, "I didn't want armies attacking a town and slaughtering people because we've seen that. Let's go deeper. Let's try to get to the spiritual violence."

Kundun is dedicated to Scorsese's mother, Catherine, an Italian immigrant who died last January at 84. She taught her son "how to tell stories, how to use punch lines," he says. "She had a sense of irony. My father (who died in 1993) was more severe, more moralistic. That's why The Age of Innocence (the film based on the Edith Wharton novel) is dedicated to him."

Scorsese pauses, a rare pause, apparently thinking of his mother and his new movie. "I'm disappointed she didn't last until it was finished."