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