Review by MyHinduPage.org. This movie is part biography of Nobel Laureate His Holiness The Dalai Lama, a man for whom I have utmost respect and admiration, and part modern history of the illegal invasion of Tibet by China. I enjoyed this movie for its artistically crafted biography of The Dalai Lama, the scenes of natural beauty and culture of Tibetan life and the horrific invasion of a peaceful country by an aggressive and brutal China. You will leave this movie feeling sorry for the Tibetan people and with great regard for the Dalai Lama and his struggle to preserve a nation and its people. The music score is also amazing.
Review by Toshifumi Fujiwara on Amazon.com
One of the beauties of KUNDUN comes from the way it preserves and recreates a culture that is now almost extinct, of a Tibet which is now almost completely destroyed. And it is a beautiful culture, where almost every detail is related with spiritual value, the very values that our contemporary culture is in the verge of completely losing them, yet still so essential to human life. To see this film is, first and foremost, like a meditation.
Dante Ferretti's design recreating faithfully the traditional costumes and building with a great reality, with Roger Deakins beautiful cinematography (which depth, nuances and richness of colors are so beautifully transferred on this DVD), as well as Philip Glass's music, make KUNDUN a visual poem. Also must be noted is Thelma Schoonmaker's complex editing which explores and reveals the complexity of the story and giving them a beautiful, almost musical rhythm. According to Mr. Scorsese, the climatic Sand-Mandhala montage sequence that cross-cut the Dalai Lama's exile to India and a religious ceremony was her idea, and it brings the film up to an incredible spiritual level. Yet, Scorsese does not show Tibet as an idyllic and idealized society. By using the young Dalai Lama's point of view as a narrative strategy throughout the film, by showing almost everything through his eyes, the film also glimpses at the complexity of the Tibetan society and its own problems; "I didn't know monks has guns" "Is there a prison in Potala" says the 12 years old Dalai Lama.
Violence, or human pain to be more exact, is also present in this film. An amazing nightmare sequence shows the Dalai Lama in the midle of thousands of dead monks. A typical Scorsese image? Well, in fact, it is a faithful recreation of a dream that the Dalai Lama himself has told the filmmakers. In this sense, KUNDUN is also a documentary as much as it is a beautifully created dramatic piece. A particulary poignant moment is when the Dalai Lama gives audience to his people, an old woman starts saying something in Tibetan, as if she was posessed by her traumatic experience. This scene, according to Mr.Scorsese, actually happened as they started to shoot the scene. They put a photo of the real Dalai Lama, and the woman started to talk like that. All the filmmakers did was to film her, and leave it as it is in the film, without even a translation. We can't tell what she says, but we understand the deep sorrow, the truth of her emotion. This is indeed one of the most emotional scene Scorsese, the ultimate filmmaker of emotiin, has ever presented us.
As different as it may seems on the surface level, KUNDUN also explores the familiar Scorsese themes, of the dilemma between religious spiritual values of human trying to be good, and the harsh reality of the world they live in and their own human vulnerabilities inside them; a conflict that has been always present in his films since WHO'S THAT KNOCKING ON MY DOOR and MEAN STREETS, the dilemma that drove Travis Bickle to a burst of bloody violence, the demon inside that Jake La Motta had to fight, the conflict of divinity versus humanity in Jesus.
But KUNDUN takes a different direction. Instead of being obsessed with his own dilemma that drives him near self-destruction (as did so many Scorsese heroes), the Dalai Lama goes beyond that to become the human incarnation of not divinity, but of ultimate compassion. It is amazing how, after witnessing so much violence and anger, he could reach such a state of peace in mind.
Most of the people in the film are non-actors; real Tibetans (the Dalai Lama's mother is played by one of his own niece), and though their performance are not as dramatic as De Niro, Keitel, Pesci, Dafoe, Day Lewis and Pfeifer et all, they bring a truthfulness to the screen.
Mr.Scorsese told me in an interview last year "It was almost like a prayer to make this movie. And my life has changed, to certain extent". I believe this film has the same effects, to certain extent, to us viewers as well.
The film also carries an important political-- Mr.Scorsese says he prefer the word "human"-- message: "Non-violence is the only revolutionary idea left to us", says Martin Scorsese.
