KunDun

Kundun is a somewhat obscure movie that tells the life story of the Dalai Lama. It's a Martin Scorsese film which was nominated for a few AcademyAwards? the same year as Titanic (so obviously Titanic won all those awards) including art direction, cinematography, music (original score by Philip Glass), costume design, and set decoration.

• JessicaFisher thinks this is one of the best movies she's ever seen. It really needs to be shown on a big screen with a big sound system to get its full effect, though. The scenery is gorgeous and the music is incredible, and the overall effect left me thinking about the movie for the next few days after I saw it. There's no action, no romance, no horror and nothing SciFi?, but you do get wrapped up in the characters and their struggles (as China invades Tibet and the Dalai Lama is forced to flee to India). Everyone I know who's seen this in the proper environment has loved it. It's SO much better than SevenYearsInTibet?, which really was about "Let's make a movie with Brad Pitt and Tibet, which are two things people are concerned about!" Kundun is very serious and portrays Tibetan culture and the hostile Chinese takeover beautifully. Okay, NOW will you all watch this? Please?

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• MarkSandoval thinks KunDun kicked Brad Pitt's arse. This was a very well done film. I'm sort of a purist, and would have preffered that it was actually filmed on location in Nepal rather than in the Andes (darn political dificulties), but that doesn't detract from the film in the slightest (unless you're familiar with Andean geography, which I'm not, so no complaints here). The part when Mao tells the Dalai Lama that religion is poison is such a powerful scene. You can feel the protaganists hopes of diplomacy being crushed on that line. Sniff. When that same line came up in SevenYearsInTibet? it was very flat and hurried and done without creating much emotional effect. One way this film has lastingly affected me is that whenever I see two crows, I see it as a sign of good luck. But crows are usually in flocks, so then my obsessively superstitious side takes over and starts counting the crows to be sure that they're all evenly paired up. And if they're not, oh, the horrors! Cuckoo! Watch this movie or suffer much overflowing guilt.

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CategoryMovie