For centuries the Tibetans had observed that visions of the future could be seen in this lake. In order to find the present 14th incarnation, the Regent of Tibet took a journey to Lake Lhamo Lhatso in southern Tibet. Since the first Dalai Lama, each reincarnation has succeeded in bringing peace and wisdom to not only Tibetan Buddhists but to many around the world. At any rate, the fact that Kundun inspired the new Guns N'Roses album, Chinese Democracy, should not prejudice you against it.Reincarnation can be defined as a rebirth of the soul in a new body. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, also known as The Buddha of Compassion has been reborn thirteen times. The answer to the question of how factually accurate it is, though, depends on whether your sympathies lie with the Tibetans or the Chinese. Because it sticks to the available sources and pays lavish attention to the visual and musical aspects of Tibetan culture, it earns a respectable grade. Notwithstanding the occasional slip-up, Kundun is faithful to the Dalai Lama's own autobiography and the Tibetan version of events. Even the Dalai Lama himself is portrayed as serenely remote, whereas anyone who has seen him interviewed by Michael Palin knows that he is a warm and open person who enjoys watching TV and can't stop giggling. Almost everyone in the movie is either a placid Tibetan monk or a mean Chinese general. But the bigger problem - assuming that you're interested enough to watch a film about 20th-century Tibetan history in the first place - is that the characters are unengaging and rather two-dimensional. The lack of stars was widely blamed for condemning Kundun to box-office ignominy. Instead, it tells the story through a cast of exiled Tibetans. Unlike Seven Years in Tibet - released around the same time, and starring the peroxided Brad Pitt as a Nazi fugitive who forms an unlikely friendship with the young Dalai Lama - Kundun does not provide western audiences with a cypher character. ![]() No mean Chinese generals here, only monks. On its release, Kundun prompted a predictable fit of pique and banning on the part of the Chinese government. Scorsese's support for Tibetan independence is certainly a defensible political position, but his exclusion of any real sense of the Chinese case makes the events shown here rather baffling. What the film doesn't mention is that Tibet was invaded by a British expedition in 1904, made a treaty with Britain two years later that prompted the war of 1910 with China, and allowed British agents to remain on its territory until the 1940s. This seems like a wild claim, unless you read a lot into the Dalai Lama's appeal to the US, Britain and India. ![]() The Chinese turn up, insisting that Tibet has been under the jackboot of imperialism and that they are its liberators. (In fact, it was granted in 1947.) Controversy Which would be a flimsy reason at the best of times, but a very odd one to give in 1945, when India was still part of the British empire and independence was widely thought to be a very long way off. Not India, they warn, as it is "a newly independent nation". ![]() In a scene set in 1945, the Dalai Lama asks his advisers whether he should appeal to foreign powers such as the US, Britain or India. But the Chinese revolution is under way and things are looking wobbly for Tibet. To his family's amazement, the boy - now known as Tenzin Gyatso - is announced as the 14th Dalai Lama.
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