Seven Years in Tibet
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Most Americans are probably familiar with the story of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people's struggle against Mao Tse Tung and the Republic of China. Of course, many Americans probably believe the Dalai Lama to be the "head Buddhist," much like the Pope is the head of the Catholic Church. The American media certainly seems to treat him that way. Of course, he is actually the head of the Tibetan sect of Buddhism, and of the Tibetan people. The popular view of him probably has more to do with his life-long and heroic struggle against the Chinese government than it does with any inherent advantages in the Tibetan form of Buddhism. I think also that American celebrities like Richard Gere seem to have a natural urge to want to "champion" a good, right and just cause. If you are one of those interested principally in either the Dalai Lama's story or the story of the Tibetan people, Kundun is probably the better choice, as we shall see later. One of the reasons for this is that the focus of Seven Years is really the story of Heinrich Harrer, as played by Brad Pitt.
Seven Years in Tibet has, I think, been unfairly criticized by movie critics; it seems they couldn't "stomach" a movie with both Buddhism and Brad Pitt. However, if you can get by all the baggage Brad carries with him (if you can believe him as a W.W.II Nazi mountain climber), he is in fact a good actor. And Seven Years presents a good story. Harrer was a W.W.II Austrian mountain climber attempting to climb the Himalayas. The expedition ran into bad weather and eventually landed him in Tibet, resulting in his now famous friendship with the teenaged Dalai Lama. Harrer, at that time a Nazi, was an extremely arrogant and ill-tempered person. Obviously, after meeting the Dalai Lama, the friendship begins to have a calming effect on Harrer. However, if we weigh the relative effects of Harrer's W.W.II experiences on his character, it actually seems as if it was Harrer's association with his friend, played by David Thewlis, that had the more profound effect.
The key event in the movie to me as a Buddhist is what I call the "watch incident." What happens is that during their escape over the Himalayas from the British concentration camp (which they landed in when their original expedition failed), the character played by Thewlis was "tricked" by Harrer into selling a valuable watch to a roadside vendor for food. We find out that Harrer had several watches he himself could have sold, but selfishly "conned" Thewlis into selling his. Much later, after the two of them have gone through the entire movie blaming each other and competing with each other for "favors" (including the love of a beautiful girl), there is a very touching scene. Harrer gives the Thewlis character a gift. It is the long-lost watch, which Harrer had apparently found in the local market. It brings the Thewlis character - and us - to tears.
Though it is not specified in the movie as such, I think Buddhists will recognize this as the classic "Buddhist transformation." One of the key teachings of Buddhism regards how our human tendency to see things only from our self-centered perspective causes suffering in our lives and in the lives of those around us, and Seven Years illustrates this truth. Just as Harrer does, we also can receive this enlightenment when we suddenly realize how selfish we've been and how that has blinded us to our common humanity. To Harrer, it was like saying to the Thewlis character, whom he had previously schemed and fought against, "You are my brother."[1]
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