Mountains, monks and mandalas

·期刊原文
Mountains, monks and mandalas:
'Kundun' and 'Seven Years in Tibet.'

by Mark Abramson
Cineaste

Vol.23 No.3

Summer 1998

Pp.8-12

Copyright by Cineaste Publishers Inc.

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In 1925, cinemas in London's West End were showing the documentary
film Epic of Everest. Shot during a recent failed British expedition
during which two climbers died near Everest's peak, the film was a
paean to the unconquerable "purity" of the Tibetan mountains, in
contrast to the "dirt" and queer customs of the Tibetan people. It
became the subject of official Tibetan government protests and a
cause celebre in Anglo-Tibetan relations not only because of certain
"vulgar and indecent" scenes (such as one which portrayed a man
delousing a boy and killing the lice between his teeth, leading to
the British interpretation that lice were part of the Tibetan diet),
but even more so because the screenings were accompanied by a music
and dance performance by a troupe of Tibetan monks, referred to in
the British popular press as "the dancing lamas." Peter Hansen's
excellent article on the subject shows how the British media reacted
to the Tibetans with a mix of condescending humor (a sample headline
read, "Seven Lamas Come to Town. Escape from Tibet as Bales of Fur";
the monks were also taken to the London Zoo and photographed with
the llamas), respect for their mystical religion, sympathy towards
these strangers in a strange land, and, most telling, objections
that the tawdry display would kill "the romance and mystery of
Tibet."(1)
Two films released in late 1997, Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun,
are evidence not only of a renewed interest in the United States and
Europe in the political, cultural, and ecological plight of Tibet,
which has been growing since the Lhasa demonstrations of 1989 and
the Dalai Lama's Nobel Prize for Peace in the same year, but also of
an ongoing fascination with Tibet as a culture, a religion, and a
place within which Western visions can flourish. Unlike previous
Hollywood feature films, from Lost Horizon (1937) to The Golden
Child (1986), Seven Years and Kundun treat Tibet as a real place,
reproduce Tibetan clothing, architecture, and rituals with an
impressive degree of versimilitude, and attempt to re-create actual
historical events. Although the two films approach their subjects
with a great deal of respect - indeed, reverence - and avoid turning
Tibetan culture and religion into another display of dancing lamas,
they would, I suspect, have been heartily approved of by the British
journalists of the 1920s for successfully preserving Tibet's exotic
aura.
Of the two films, Seven Years in Tibet, directed by Jean Jacques
Annaud (Quest For Fire, The Name of the Rose, The Lover) is much
more the conventional feature film. It tells the true story of
Heinrich Harrer (Brad Pitt) and Peter Aufschnaiter (David Thewlis),
climbers on a German expedition in the Himalayas who are interned in
India at the start of World War II, make their escape to Tibet, and
end up living in Lhasa until the Chinese annexation or, in the words
of the Chinese, the "liberation" of Tibet in 1950.
Based on the Austrian Harrer's memoir of the same title, a rather
dry though fascinating account of his adventures and of daily life
in Lhasa (mainly in the aristocratic circles he frequented), the
film in the hands of Annaud and screenwriter Becky Johnston (Prince
of Tides) becomes a story of Harrer's individual redemption. He
comes, through his friendships with Aufschnaiter and the young Dalai
Lama, to regret his earlier rejections of his family (he abandons
his wife and unborn son at the beginning of the film) and comrades.
Only after principal photography had been completed was it revealed
in Stem that Harter had joined the Nazi SA in 1933 and the SS in
1938. A couple of lines of dialog referring to Harrer as "a
distinguished member" of the Nazi Party were then inserted, and
there is an implied comparison of the Chinese Communists to the
Nazis near the end of the film, but Harrer's development in the film
is personal, not political (he has claimed that he joined in order
to participate in expeditions such as the one in India, and the film
does accurately show that these expeditions were direct expressions
of national pride and the belief in German superiority). Indeed, we
are led to believe that Harrer undergoes some sort of Buddhist
transformation with the help of the Dalai Lama, for the production
notes inform us that, "as the deep and abiding bond between these
two isolated, lonely people [Harrer and the Dalai Lama] evolved, the
selfish and egotistical Harrer experienced selflessness for the
first time, allowing him to complete the emotional transformation
which began on his way to Lhasa."
In turn, the Dalai Lama becomes the son that Harrer yearns to have.
Jamyang Wangchuk, the son of a Bhutanese diplomat, does a fine job
portraying the adolescent Dalai Lama, but his role is only
significant when it depicts the moments when he and Harrer bond
emotionally. These scenes occasionally ring a false note,
particularly as they suggest unwarrantedly that Harrer became a
surrogate father to the Dalai Lama (the Dalai Lama's real father,
whom he saw more often but had a more distant relationship with than
his mother, is barely shown in the film).
Seven Years uses a typical ploy of historical films, and
particularly biopics, in giving the central character's personal
development more weight by placing him in the center of the
historical action. In doing so, the film seriously distorts history.
The film egregiously has Harrer remaining in Lhasa after the Chinese
occupation, counseling the Dalai Lama on the proper course of
action, and even assaulting with impunity a Tibetan collaborator in
full view of Chinese soldiers.
In reality, Harrer had the good sense to leave Lhasa in the company
of the Dalai Lama and his entourage for a spot near the Indian
border prior to the Chinese army's arrival. Negotiations between the
Chinese and Tibetan governments then ensued, and, after several
months, the Dalai Lama was persuaded to accept the Seventeen-Point
Agreement signed by his envoys in Beijing (not, as Seven Years would
have us believe, in Tibet) and returned to Lhasa. By this point,
Harrer (and Aufschnaiter) were long gone. The few Westerners who
were living in Tibet (and whose existence, despite their arguably
greater significance in Tibetan society compared to Harter and
Aufschnaiter, is denied in Seven Years) and did have the courage,
and foolhardiness, to remain in Tibet, were arrested as imperialist
spies and subjected to brainwashing and long prison terms.
Even more troubling, however, though not surprising, is the overall
reduction of Tibetans and Tibetan culture to a mix of stereotypes
and simplifications which mostly serve to provide an exotic
background to Pitt's portrayal of Harrer's emotional growth. This
does a disservice to the book, which completely lacks the
navel-gazing emotionalism of the movie, and to Harrer himself, who
is caricatured as an ignorant boor at the beginning of the film in
order to make his transformation all the more dramatic. For example,
Harrer had studied Hindustani, Japanese, and Tibetan prior to his
escape from the internment camp, whereas in the film he is unable to
speak any Tibetan and has to be bailed out by Aufschnaiter.
The two main adult Tibetan characters, the minister Tsarong (Mako)
who befriends Harrer and Aufschnaiter, and the secretary who becomes
a minister, Ngawang Jigme (B.D. Wong), who surrenders a vital
Tibetan stronghold and then collaborates with the Chinese, are both
historical figures given one-dimensional, symbolic roles. Tsarong is
the noble elder who dispenses advice, hangs around looking
distinguished, and allows the audience, ignorant of the fact that
Harter and Aufschnaiter were not the only foreigners in Lhasa, to
accept their rapid metamorphosis from begrimed vagabonds to the
toast of Lhasa high society. Jigme, who is still alive and living in
Beijing (though currently extremely ill), was in reality an
extremely complex character. He is still despised as the Tibetan
Benedict Arnold, even though his initial surrender seems to have
been the result of cowardice and confusion rather than treason, but
over the years he has also become an object of some sympathy and
even admiration for trying to ameliorate the worst aspects of
Chinese rule at the cost of his dignity and reputation. In the film,
however, B.D. Wong plays him as a sinister and effete courtier whose
mannerisms seems more than coincidentally reminiscent of his earlier
Broadway role in M. Butterfly. His evident hatred of the Tibetan
secular and religious leadership, resulting from his overweening
ambitions and feelings of exclusion from the aristocratic inner
circle (the screenplay only hints at this), is apparently supposed
to prefigure and mirror the Chinese communists' own revulsion toward
the traditional Tibetan hierarchy and the values it represents.
Mao's famous remark to the Dalai Lama, "Religion is poison", is
placed as a throwaway line in the mouth of a Chinese general in
Seven Years in order to reinforce the point.
Neither Seven Years nor Kundun show the exploitative, regressive,
and ultimately self-defeating nature of the dual religious and
secular hierarchies which governed Tibet. In fact, the current Dalai
Lama's predecessor had been forced by conservative elements who
feared losing their own hereditary prerogatives and local power
bases into repealing nascent military, tax, land, and infrastructure
reforms which had begun the modernization of Tibet and contributed
to the defeat of a Chinese invasion in 1917-18.
Yet, the greatest disservice of Seven Years is its caricaturing of
the role of Buddhism in Tibetan society. Not only does virtually
every speaking Tibetan character in the film dispense nuggets of
enlightened philosophy along the lines of "You Westerners prize
achievement, we in Tibet value harmony," but there are several
occasions when Tibetan nonviolence, meeting Western audience
expectations, is taken to ludicrous extremes. In an insightful
article, the Tibetan scholar Jamyang Norbu lambastes a scene where
Tibetan workers and monks rescue earthworms from the site of the
movie theatre Harrer is building for the Dalai Lama ("In past life,
this innocent worm was your mother. Please, no more hurting!") as
one that Tibetan viewers would find ridiculous. Later, Tibetan
soldiers, who were in actuality equipped with rifles, are shown
using bows and arrows against Chinese troops.(2)
Prior to their arrival in Lhasa, Harrer and Aufschnaiter are robbed,
taken hostage, and almost killed by bandits, but somehow these
bandits don't register as being 'real' Tibetans. They are certainly
not identified with the pathetic Tibetan army in the film, though in
fact such tribesmen did serve in the Tibetan army (and, initially,
the Chinese army - they didn't like the high taxes levied by the
government in Lhasa and were taken in by Chinese good behavior and
promises of income redistribution in the early stages of the
takeover) and were the core of Tibetan resistance to the Chinese in
the 1950s and early 1960s. Ironically, while Seven Years provides a
much richer re-creation of Tibetan life than Kundun (which is
restricted to the viewpoint of the Dalai Lama and mainly shows us
his two residences), the script intentionally subverts the
impressive authenticity of the art direction in order not to upset
the sympathetic yet unrealistic views of Tibet that predominate in
the West.
Many scholars and some voices in the popular media have begun to
point out, if not directly challenge, Western myths of Tibet. The
Western fascination with Tibet can be traced back to the medieval
European belief in a Central Asian kingdom ruled by the Christian
king Prester John which would roll back the expansion of Islam.
Western travelers to Tibet from the seventeenth century on have
remarked on the piety of the Tibetan people and the power of the
Buddhist church, but the stereotype of Tibet did not remain static.
During the 1904 British expedition into Tibet under Younghusband
(aimed to force the Tibetans to sign a treaty and forestall the
perceived threat of Russian expansion into Central Asia), the
Tibetans were portrayed as ignorant, dirty, and fanatical, a
depiction which was still evident in Epic of Everest twenty years
later. Norbu's article points out the similarity of this rhetoric to
that of the Chinese a half-century later, all designed to justify
the invasion of a peaceful country. Once Tibet was properly
subservient to British interests, however, and became increasingly
isolated and non-threatening, its image as an alpine haven of
nonviolence and spirituality became increasingly fixed until it was
'fossilized' by James Hilton's novel The Lost Horizon (1933).
A recent broadcast on the PBS documentary program Frontline was
devoted to Western views of Tibet and the making of Seven Years and
Kundun.(3) Though the show was largely a rehash of American foreign
policy towards Tibet and China and a discussion of the political
pressure that China put on the companies which financed the two
films, it did contain quotes by two celebrities noted for their
association with the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism which indicate
that little has changed in the West's perceptions of Tibet in the
last sixty years. Richard Gere: "The West is very young. We're not
very wise. And I think we're hopeful that there is a place that is
ancient and wise and open and filled with light." Steven Seagal (who
has been recognized as the reincarnation of a Tibetan lama): "For
me, in Buddhism there are specific teachings that address a lot of
the tremendous hardships and dilemmas and poisons that we face in
modern-day society." While Gere's comment borders on the ridiculous
- Western culture is ultimately rooted in the civilizations of
Mesopotamia and Egypt, which predate all other comparable
civilizations - Seagal's remark is reasonable but could be uttered
by any practicing religionist today about his or her own faith. Yet,
they point to the important aspects of the position Tibet holds in
the Western imagination today - as a religion and culture of immense
spirituality and ancient wisdom and as a place and people whose
chief attribute is their perpetuation of a premodern, preindustrial,
preconsumer and nonviolent ethos and way of life. Tibet in Seven
Years is another version of the Sioux homeland in Dances With Wolves
or the world of the superior aliens in Contact, a cinematic Club
Med, the antidote to civilization and its discontents.
Kundun, directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Melissa Mathison
(E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, The Black Stallion), is a vastly
different film from Seven Years. It is, by current Hollywood
standards, narratively unconventional. It avoids the simplistic
portrayal of Tibet and pandering towards popular Western audience
tastes and expectations that characterizes Seven Years. Moreover, it
is one of those rare films which successfully unites form and
content. These characteristics are both the film's great strength
and, if we wish to take the film, as many critics and viewers have,
as wanting to say something meaningful about Tibet, its great
weakness.
Kundun follows in its sequence of events the Dalai Lama's own
autobiography, My Land and My People (though, as the production
notes inform us, the screenplay is based largely on his "personal
revelations" to Mathison) from his discovery in 1937 at the age of
two as the fourteenth incarnation of the Dalai Lama to his flight
from Lhasa in 1959 and the beginning of his period of exile which
has extended up to the present. The film is thus an authorized
autobiography, told exclusively from the perspective of the Dalai
Lama as portrayed by four different actors. Therefore, while
political events, largely those dealing with the looming
Sino-Tibetan crisis, are explained (often simplistically) to the
Dalai Lama, and thus to the audience, the incredibly rich depictions
of ceremonies, rituals, and the lives of Tibetan monks which are
contained in the film are, as part of the fabric of the Dalai Lama's
own upbringing, left unexplained.
This technique is similar to the tradition of narrationless
ethnographic filmmaking which includes Frederick Wiseman's
documentaries and, more recently, Ulrike Ottinger's monumental
documentary on Mongolia, Taiga (1993). It is even more reminiscent
of the Chinese director Tian Zhuangzhuang's Horse Thief (1988), a
film set in pre-1949 Tibet and told from a single perspective with a
large number of unexplained rituals and other cultural details.
While it was criticized in China for obscurantism and its allegedly
negative portrayal of Tibetan society as "primitive" and
"superstitious," it has been widely admired in the West for its
cinematic technique and attention to detail. In a recent interview
with PBS's Charlie Rose, Scorsese accorded high praise to recent
Chinese films, but singled out only one film - Horse Thief.
While some key recurring symbols and rituals in Kundun are somewhat
accessible to the audience, such as the disappearing sand mandala
and the Nechung oracle, other important elements defy interpretation
to all except the best informed viewers. To give one example, the
dance performance outside the Potala witnessed by the Dalai Lama is
actually satirizing the Nechung oracle. This scene gives a whole new
understanding of the role of prophecy in the film (which is
significant) and adds a different dimension to Tibetan Buddhism,
which, in both films, is rather solemnized and sanitized, but here
it comes across to the typical viewer as merely added spectacle.
In fact, the theme which most closely unites both Kundun and Seven
Years with the popular Western image of Tibet is an unquestioning
awe of and respect for Tibetan Buddhism as exemplified in the figure
of the Dalai Lama. Seven Years is nothing but reverential in its
depiction of Buddhism, while Kundun is a virtual hagiography of the
Dalai Lama, who is presented as evolving into a Buddhist exemplar.
In the interviews and press materials assembled for the two films,
the participants routinely cite their admiration of Tibetan culture
and religion, as well as of the Dalai Lama himself. Scorsese, in an
interview with Amy Taubin in Sight and Sound, effused: "I think he
[the Dalai Lama] behaves the way we all should behave. And then I
met him with Melissa [Mathison], and what happens is that you want
to be like him. And I don't find that with many clerics in my own
religion." Mathison herself has said about the reading of the script
with the Dalai Lama that "it was such a special time for me, for
God's sake. I think he [the Dalai Lama] enjoyed it, but for my
husband [Harrison Ford] and me, it was truly one of the great times
of our life."(4)
The close involvement of the production with prominent members of
the Tibetan government-in-exile and official religious and cultural
institutions, not to mention "the cooperation and contribution of
His Holiness the Dalai Lama," indicate that Kundun, in addition to
its artistic aspirations, is helping to burnish the image of the
Dalai Lama and the official Tibetan government line. This is
particularly significant in light of the fact that tensions within
the Tibetan exile community over the lack of any alternative to the
Dalai Lama's domination of the organs of government, the power
exercised by the Dalai Lama's family and intimates, disputes between
the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism, and the image of Tibet
projected by the Dalai Lama, have flared up in recent years in
political splits, breakaway sects, and even political killings. An
increasing number of Tibetans, while continuing to respect the Dalai
Lama, are critical of the exclusively nonviolent tactics used in the
struggle for independence. For these reasons, many Tibetans have
dismissed Kundun as propaganda.
It is not my intention to argue that the Dalai Lama is not an
extraordinarily charismatic and profoundly moral individual, nor
that Tibetan Buddhism, like all of the world's religions, expresses
profound truths and reflects rich cultural traditions. Yet, I wish
to point out the extremely narrow picture of Tibet one gets from the
two films, and the fact that such a narrow picture merely plays into
the current Western fascination with Tibet, a fascination that is
based on an image of the exotic and fantastic and rooted in
ignorance. In 1949 a Tibetan trade delegation to the West was
shocked at how little the world knew about their country, and one
recalled in amazement that, "Some people thought all Tibetans lived
either in tents or in monasteries."(5) Little has changed. While
this fascination has translated into an ever growing sympathy for
the Tibetan position vis-a-vis China, as Jamyang Norbu noted on
Frontline, "It's a fuzzy kind of sympathy because it never touches
on the reality." This may seem to be a petty criticism - are films
ever able to truly represent a culture, a religion, or a people? The
problem is that these films do not challenge in any way the dominant
representation of Tibetans which Norbu and an increasing number of
Tibetans and Westerners see as ultimately detrimental to the Tibetan
cause.
Even within the narrow frame adopted by both films of Tibetans as
primarily nonviolent, premodern Buddhists, they both emphasize
spectacle over substance and cliches over profundity. This is not so
noticeable in Seven Years, where we are expected to attend more to
Brad Pitt than to any Tibetan, but in Kundun these gaps are more
glaring. The Buddhist education of the Dalai Lama, which in
actuality was at the core of his evolution from childhood to
adulthood in the years portrayed in the film, is given short shrift.
Only one scene really shows the process of his instruction, and it
fails to convey the wonderfully complex yet accessible metaphysics
of which the Dalai Lama is an acknowledged master. Rather, Kundun is
an intensely visual film, eschewing words for images. Scorsese is to
be applauded for making such an expressive and, indeed, pure film,
given the temptation when making a biopic to preach, as in Gandhi,
and, to a certain extent, Seven Years. He risks incomprehensibility
in order to portray the impressionistic, emotional, and unreliable
tesserae of a child and young adult's memories.
This approach reaches a crescendo in the last half hour of the film
when the events of the flight to India in 1959 merge seamlessly with
memories, dreams, and mindscapes/visions. We witness the Dalai
Lama's own awakening to the unity of time and space and his
paradoxical appreciation both of the value of all living forms as
well as their ultimate emptiness. Whether or not viewers are able to
make all of these connections, they certainly feel the emotional
power of the images and music (by Philip Glass, a longtime friend of
the Dalai Lama) which lyrically juxtapose order and chaos, peace and
war, frustration and resignation, denial and acceptance.
Yet, Kundun ultimately does not go beyond the popular images
purveyed in the press and, now, increasingly, on the Internet. A
random search for Tibet-related items repeatedly turned up phrases
such as, "Tibet, the very name evokes feelings of awe and
mystery...[it] offers a totally different experience...it is the
destination for the ultimate thrill seeker,"(6) and "Exotic sights
and sounds from Tibet."(7) Even the introductory title for Kundun
speaks of a "thousand years of nonviolence" in Tibet prior to the
Chinese invasion, an absurd claim to be made about any country's
history, including Tibet's. While neither of the films deserves to
be saddled with the label of "Tibetan chic," both Seven Years,
because it is only partially about Tibet at all, and Kundun, because
it transcends its subject to become a cinematic meditation on memory
and transcendence, fail to render Tibet as a real place with a
history of its own. The mystery and romance live on.
End Notes:
1 Peter H. Hansen, "The Dancing Lamas of Everest: Cinema,
Orientalism, and Anglo-Tibetan Relations in the 1920s," The American
Historical Review 101.3 (June 1996): 712-747.
2 Jamyang Norbu, "Tibet in film, fiction and fantasy of the West,"
Tibetan Review (January 1998): 18-23.
3 "Dreams of Tibet: A Troubled Country and Its Enduring
Fascination," Frontline (October 28, 1997).
4 Susan Bullington Katz, "A Conversation With... Melissa Mathison,"
Written By (December/January 1998): 59-64.
5 Michael Harris Goodman, The Last Dalai Lama: A Biography (Boston:
Shambhala, 1986), 146.
6 Travellers' Nepal, 3.6 (July-August 1997).
7 Arts Letter (Fall 1996).
Marc Abramson is a Ph.D. candidate in Chinese and Inner Asian
History at Princeton University