Copyright Point Foundation Summer 1998KUNDUN
(Director: Martin Scorsese; I37 min.). Spiritual and sumptuous, historical and haunting, this tale of Tibet is my pick for the best I997 film. It tells the story of the fourteenth Dalai Lama from his discovery in I937 as a child to his escape to India in 1959. Scorsese has crafted a magnificently stylized docu-drama-from Philip Glass's score, inspired by liturgical Tibetan music, to cinematographer Roger Deakin's goldtoned images. Screenwriter Melissa Matison, who wrote E.T., must be given credit. Once again, through the Dalai Lama's life, she presents a story of faith.
Kundun is also about enhanced perception, beginning with a close-up of the child's eye and ending with the Dalai Lama looking through a telescope at his now-distant native land. Kundun is about enlightenment; light itself is central-both inner and outer. His test is his commitment to non-violence, even as it leads to the death of his loved ones and other Tibetans. After the Chinese invasion of Tibet, he takes to heart Mao's statement: "Socialism and Buddhism can coexist." Mao later "enlightens" him in Peking when he spouts: "Religion is poison." The juxtaposition of a line of dialog with a striking image is, perhaps, the most pointedly political scene about violence and nonviolence: as parts of the Dalai Lama's father's corpse are fed to vultures, a voice-over announces that China demands Tibet's submission.
From The Last Temptation of Christ to the unbridled violence of Goodfellas, Scorsese has magnificently evolved his senses of loyalty, faith, betrayal, and violence, now to encompass the latest incarnation of Buddha!
PASSION IN THE DESERT
(Director: Lavinia Currier, 93 min.). The summer 1998 release of Lavinia Currier's cinematic adaptation of Balzac's short story is set in the Egyptian desert in 1798 (filmed in Morocco). Passion centers on Augustin (Ben Daniels), a French officer from Napoleon's army temporarily lost in the desert with a painter after a sandstorm. He is protecting the painter (Michel Piccoli) who, in this parched landscape, drinks his paints to combat thirst. Augustin learns how to survive from a leopard. The leopard changes from enemy to ally to playful companion. Augustin becomes more like a desert animal himself His army unit returns. The question beautifully posed by the film is: can this officer go back to civilization? At what price?
Currier's first feature is a tour de force: she treats the leopard with awe, elements (such as heat and sand) with painterly richness, and humanity with intelligent skepticism.
SMOKE SIGNALS
(Director: Chris Eyre; Screenwriter: Sherman Alexie; 89 min.). A first film script by Sherman Alexie (author of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and The Fancy Dancer) and the first feature by Chris Eyre-both Native American artists. This road movie (a bus trip), blending comic incident with dramatic story, travels into the past of two young Native American men who must learn to forgive their fathers and themselves.
MARIUS ET JEANNETTE
(Writer/director: Robert Guediguian; 102 min.) offers not only an unusual love story of a working-class couple in their forties but, by embracing their neighbors, a generous and affectionate exploration of community. Set in sundrenched Marseilles, this dramatic comedy leaves you with the gift of thoughts to chew on: what might life be?
| [Photograph] |
| Ben Daniels, in Passion in the Desert. |
| [Photograph] |
| Kundun. Martin Scorsese with Tulku Jamyang Kunga Tenzin, who portrays the Dalai Lama at age five. |
| [Author Affiliation] |
| Annette Insdorf, Director of Undergraduate Film Studies at Columbia University, is the author of Francois Truffaut and Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust. She has been Truffaut's translator and panel organizer at Telluride (where she also translates). The French Ministry of Culture named her Chevalier dans I' ordre des arts et des lettres and later knighted her with palmes academiques. With Roger Ebert, Dr. Insdorf co-hosts the Cannes Film Festival coverage for BRAVO/IFC. |
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