"Marty, Kundun, I liked it!"
Martin Scorsese's forgotten epic, Kundun, is a spectacular tale that embodies Marty's director-as-empath personality. Meticulously researched, written (by Melissa Mathison), and staged, Kundun offers a documentary-style religious hero's journey that still oozes pathos. Similar to The Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese aims to explore the super-natural reasons and methods a human being takes to liberate his people, while struggling with the convergence of the spiritual and earthly realities that he embodies. Like Temptation, Kundun doesn't shy away from either the human temptations, worries, and struggles of a religious figure or the serious supernatural aspects to their personhood. He portrays these concepts while centering the stories within societal struggles for freedom against oppressors: in Temptation, the Roman occupation of Israel, and in Kundun, Chinese occupation of Tibet.
Roger Deakin's cinematography grounds this picture in reality while also providing hallucinatory sequences that root the narrative within the religious reality of the Tibetan people. Marty's camera does not shy away from depicting Tibetan suffering with its oftentimes dream-like movement (accompanied by Thelma Schoonmaker's spectacular editing). And while the script--perhaps the weakest part of the film--could do more to depict the political maneuverings of the Chinese Communist party, this was always going to be a story about Kundun going from chosen peasant to brave and landmark leader of the Tibetan people.
It's a shame that this film is fairly "lost" to the modern digital age, as one of two Scorsese films that are unavailable via streaming service. It is rarely discussed or reviewed, despite having great resonance with our current times. This is a film that resulted in the individual members of the production (including Scorsese himself) to be banned from China; Disney, likewise, was heavily censored in China for years until it made major concessions to the Chinese government, most notably resulting in the construction of Disneyland China. With this in mind, this film reflects the reality of the Chinese's global politics twofold, both in their continued suppression of Chinese minority groups (such as in Hong Kong and the Uyghurs, not to mention that Tibet is still largely a people-in-exile), but also in global companies' support of the Chinese government for fear of censorship within the world's largest country.
Scorsese's use of local n
... keep reading on reddit β‘Scorsese is such a hit and miss director. When he succeeds, he makes timeless pictures that redefine cinema, and when he misses, he makes spectacular bores like Kundun.
It's the story of the current Dalai Lama basically, from when he was named as the new Dalai Lama when he was 2 to when he fled Tibet at age 24. In between there is A LOT to cover, and Scorsese diligently tries to cover it all in the span of 2 hours.
It's the equivalent of when you're worried that a dissertation about a specific subject won't be enough to cover the 10,000 words, so you generalise to cover a broader subject, but then that's too many words, so you have to cut out a lot.
What Scorsese cuts is almost all the characterisation and meaningful segues between events in the Dalai Lama's life. Stuff just seems to happen with little context, a problem that plagues many biopics. And we don't really understand the Dalai Lama himself, who he is as a person. There's a few scant scenes in the beginning of the film where he seems to be fun loving and mischievous, laughing during a prayer ceremony as a mouse drinks out of a cup. But then he suddenly grows into a teenager and is a serious sod, with apparently all the wherewithal he needs for the job of Dalai Lama. That transformation alone would have been enough for a standalone film.
This would have best been presented as a mini series with themed episodes. In particular, I was curious to see what the pressure of being worshipped as a deity among men would do to a young child. None of that is addressed within the film. Scenes of him being worshipped as a child were troubling to me as a viewer, but didn't seem to be intentionally troubling and weren't followed up on. When Scorsese chose to skip over this massive point of interest, I realised this wasn't the film about the Dalai Lama I'd want to see.
Of course, the desert cinematography is beautiful, Morocco making a great stand-in Tibet, and Philip Glass's music is always interesting in its unique way - though occasionally his stuff seems like an emotional sledgehammer.
Having the characters speak English really turned me off. It's a film designed for Western audiences, and yet assumes that many Westerners will understand the politics of China and Tibet going into the film, and provides precious little context for the conflict. There's also very little exploration of the non-violence aspect of Tibetan life.
It's a pretty film, but pretty boring too. It's difficult to believe that the di
... keep reading on reddit β‘
Martin Scorsese has made three movies surrounding religion. While they all found some critical success, they also found controversy and trouble at the box office.
The Last Temptation of Christ was released in 1988 and was based on the novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis. It stars Willem Dafoe as Jesus, Harvey Keitel as Judas, and even David Bowie as Pontius Pilate. Plus it has a score by Peter Gabriel.
Kundun was released in 1997 and is based on the life and teachings of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. The movie covers the Dalai Lamaβs childhood, trouble with Communist China, and later exile.
Silence was released in 2016 and was based on the novel of the same name by ShΕ«saku EndΕ and stars Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield, and Adam Driver. Silence follows Catholic missionaries in Japan during the Edo period.
Which one of these movies would you say is the best?
In Kundun (1997) the 14th Buddha of compassion is found by showing a boy an array of objects and if he picks the ones that were owned by the previous incarnation of the Buddha.
While the boyβs discovery is painted as spiritual and magical, this scene may show that the boy picked these objects through the clever hans effect, where a child or animal picks the correct answer to a problem by looking at the faces of the ones conducting the experiment.
The term originated from a horse who apparently knew math, his owner would ask him a question and the horse would clomp out the correct answer. A psychologist at the time asked to observe Hans in action and found out that Hans would hear the question and start clomping, but what he was doing wasnβt math. The horse would stare at his audience until he saw their faces gave him confirmation he was right. Relaxed faces, satisfactory smiles or nods were cues that told him to stop clomping.
Now if we look at the scene in question we see the boy touching ALL of the items and we can see the Lama administering the test making different facial expressions while he is choosing the items. This is most prominent when the boy picks up the wrong scepter and examines it, the lama administering the test frowns, but once the child picks up the right one he stops and starts smiling.
The clever Hans effect is an experiment breaking anomaly that changes any results, that is why during child psych experiments a minimum amount of people are allowed during testing and parents are removed from the equation as they are the most likely to give subtle hints.
But thatβs just a theory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pqTBOt7ZgI is the song
Such a great small character moment for Chris. The little raised fist. Perfect. Kind of meta too given the fact that Imperioli was in Goodfellas, arguably Marty's best movie.
Some of the films that I listed are influenced/are inspired by Catholicism.
The first two are bio-pics about St. Francis.
I'm looking for more films that are like the last three partly because I enjoy how both Kundun and SYIT are essentially about the early years of the 14th Dalai Lama. Although Kundun covers a longer period in his life then Seven Years does.
No one can possibly appreciate how funny that line is until you attempt to watch Kundun. And, I say βattemptβ, because Iβm quite certain no one has ever managed to sit through the entire movie.
I know you would be hesitant to believe that skinny guinea. After all, Chris was a known liar (not as deceitful as Vito); so I can understand your trepidation to believe Him. Why would Chris care about a movie of a little boy becoming the Dalai Lama? However, hereβs why you should believe him and not just think that Chris only said it, cause it was the first movie that came to mind when he saw Marty: First, Chris loves movies. And not just gangster and horror shit. He recommended Spartacus to Ralphie. And heβs not afraid to speak his mind. He was very forthright with Jon Favreau about not liking Swingers. Heβs no ass-kisser. In conclusion, Chris really liked Kundun and that was the truth.
