Kundun

I think I am well versed in Buddhism to say that, contrary to the majority opinion, this is a superficial smattering of a wonderful practice. I don't know whose fault it is, certainly Scorsese's though he is an outsider so that is sort of to be expected. I suspect the Dalai Lama's circle were fine with a superficially romantic portrayal, so long as it generates awareness for their just cause.

Why do I say this?

The main narrative device that gives this any sort of shape (otherwise it is one long picture-pretty rambling), is the DL meditating in exile, possibly at that balcony at the Indian border, possibly at a much later time. This would be in line with the recurring motifs of prescient visions and the spyglass (looking from a distance) which is first introduced right after the screening of a silent film (the association is with memory, illusions and time gone - all things to purify the mind from in meditation).

This would somewhat excuse the fragmentary nature of the narrative and quaint focus of it on young boy versus evil empire of millions, since it was all experienced from his end. Somewhat. It is still absolutely tepid as a historic film if we switch to the 'objective' pov. Now, this last segment of the crossing to India is accompanied by the one powerful visual meditation in the film, it is not mentioned but what you see is the Kalachakra initiation with the Great Sand Mandala being constructed and brushed away, a powerful and sacred occasion.

Get it? This is it, this one moment. The DL is heartbroken and his courage waning, and lost in meditation, he finds peace in reminding himself of the transience of all things, which is what the ritual represents and a core Buddhist precept, the cosmos being washed away back into river-sand. The entire rest of the film is a pageant; oracles hiss, rituals go on, dances, ornate ceremonies, hushed whispers of banality.

Scorsese mistakes here the theater of appearances (the religion) for the essence. He films the ritual as the thing-in-itself, as spectacle, instead of as the space that allows you to cultivate a compassionate mind. The postcard instead of the real spiritual landscape.

How rich this would be if, for instance, we had contrasts between flows of remembered ordinary life and abstractions in three- and twodimensional space in the dances and mandala, and all of that (all the costumes, the ceremonies, the symbols and human suffering) understood as different sides of one image -empty- brushed away as the mind heals itself. I am in awe of the possibilities!

No dice. Scorsese films operatic platitudes.

Skip this if you want to know Buddhism. Go straight for Why Did Bodhidharma Left for the East? or even Herzog's Buddhist doc, which he also filmed around the Kalachakra. Blowup, if you want deep, incidentally Buddhist essaying on the roots of suffering.