Movie-Kundun

Who woulda thought? Scorsese does the Dalai Lama? But in Kundun (1997), the legendary director turns his lens on a biopic of the current Dalai Lama and Tibet, and comes up with a nice effort, but with a picture that somehow missed the mark for me.

I think he did make a strategic error first of all in making this movie with ethnic actors, but all speaking English. Somehow, it just sucks the authenticity right out of the film. Audiences are more and more accepting of subtitles it the movie is well made. OK, maybe that is why he goes with English, because this movie moves with fits and starts, starting with the young boy, a toddler really, and moving, seemingly at random, as the Dalai Lama ages.

And the film can never really decide if it wants to get into the political situation of Tibet, or just focus on the Dalai Lama, so it kind of just straddles both, hoping to throw in enough of both to be satisfactory...but it isn't.

This film is well intentioned. I love the subject matter. I love the Scorsese had the guts to try something different. But really, for me, it did not work that well. It did not engage me much emotionally or intellectually due to the problems mentioned above. And though the Dalai Lama has become a great spiritual leader, the film ends at the start of his exile from Tibet at about 18 years old, so we do not even get to see that aspect of the man. The movie was a bit of a disappointment.