Dreaming Lhasa

Dirs. Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam. 2005. N/R. 90mins. In English and subtitled Tibetan. Tenzing Chokyi Gyatso, Jampa Kalsang, Tenzin Jigme.

Documentarian Schaedler is a Swiss anthropologist who supports the cause of Tibetan independence but criticizes romantic Western conceptions of Tibet as the magical, mystical wonderland outside the realm of human history and politics.

Screening in tandem with Dreaming Lhasa  (a feature set among the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala, India),  Schaedler’s doc Angry Monk  complicates our image of Tibet and its people by resurrecting the memory of Gendun Choephel, a monk who quit his high-status position in the Buddhist hierarchy in the late 1920s to explore the outside world, and who came back from his odyssey convinced that Tibet would have to liberate itself from its fossilized religious traditions and theocratic system of government if it wanted to avoid colonization by neighboring powers already beginning to modernize. 

The subject sounds fascinating, but Schaedler is not a gifted explainer and Angry Monk is vague and inaccessible. Problems ostensibly begin with the fact that Tibetan and Chinese authorities have done such a good job of erasing Choephel from history that only a few photographs and sketches of him remain. It was perhaps to fill the resulting visual void that Schaedler opted for a travelogue format that minutely retraces Choephel’s movements through Tibet and India while casting only the dimmest of light on his political thought.

More frustrating still is Schaedler’s failure to describe the nature of the regime Choephel was hoping to overthrow, beyond characterizing it as rigid, aristocratic and ingrown. A little background on the political economy of the country prior to the Chinese takeover would have gone a long way toward opening up this film for those who aren’t already up to speed on the subject.

In lieu of a breakdown of Choephel’s political ideas, we hear quite a bit about his rejection of “the false duties of monastic obligations” in favor of booze, tobacco and prostitutes, which is not without human interest but contributes little to our understanding of his historical significance. Still, there’s no questioning the validity of his pithy analysis of China’s 1951 capture of Tibet: “Now we’re fucked!”

Dreaming Lhasa is an earnest but amateurish affair about a team of documentary filmmakers interviewing former Tibetan political prisoners about their oppression at the hands of the Chinese. The female half of the team, Karma (Gyatso), is a New Yorker trying to reconnect with her ethnic roots. She and her Indian-born cameraman (Jigme) suspend their filmmaking to assist a taciturn ex-monk (Kalsang) in his quest to find a missing former resistance fighter. The point of the exercise would seem to be to memorialize Tibetans who fought  the Chinese while demonstrating that younger Tibetans engage in such modern behaviors as drinking, dancing in discos and playing guitars. (Both films open Fri; Gene Siskel Film Center.) — Cliff Doerksen