Word: lama
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...season in which the world of American entertainment became fascinated with Buddhism. Neither Seven Years nor Kundun is overtly about the faith. The first recounts the story of Pitt's character, Heinrich Harrer, a superstar mountain climber and Nazi poster boy who is humanized while tutoring the preteen Dalai Lama in Tibet in the 1940s and '50s. The second tells the remarkable tale of the Dalai Lama more or less through his own eyes, from his recognition as reincarnated Buddha of compassion at age two until his escape to India at 24. Each film's strongest statement is on China...
...story follows the adventures of one Heinrich Harrer (Pitt), an Austrian mountain climber whose mountaineering expedition eventually takes him to the holy Tibetan city of Lhasa. The journey marks an emotional awakening for Harrer, one that culminates in his befriending the Dalai Lama, whose friendship and spiritual guidance emboldens him to return to and face tangled domestic issues at home. The relative lack of compelling ideas and characters to identify with before this enlightenment--basically, during Harrer's journey to Tibet--acts as a foil for the movie's latter, more fulfilling half...
...interaction between Harrer and the Dalai Lama is quite touching, even sweet. Harrer is called on to tutor the 12-year-old religious sovereign in the ways of the west, and the child's extreme patience and innocent wisdom, coupled with an incredibly warm smile, make him very endearing...
While the audience is eating this up with a spoon, Annaud smoothly slips in political issues concerning China's occupancy of Tibet and the ongoing struggle of the Dalai Lama to maintain Tibet's traditional peaceful position. Both Harrer and we the viewers--who have been in parallel states of emotional responsiveness the whole way through--are at this point immediately receptive and sympathetic to the urgency of the Tibetan cause. In only half a movie, the audience comes to buy a complete shift in a character's personality, a familial reconciliation which was at first daunting and allegiance...
Years ago, the expression was "He's not a bad guy, but he's no Albert Schweitzer." Mother Teresa then replaced Schweitzer as the gold standard of goodness. Who will succeed her? Tom Hanks could, Jimmy Carter would want to, but we place our bets on the Dalai Lama or Nelson Mandela...