Seven Years in Tibet (1997)

Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. Starring Brad Pitt, David Thewlis, B. D. Wong, Mako, Jamyang Jamtsho Wangchuk, Lhakpa Tsamchoe, Sonam Wangchuk, Victor Wong, Danny Denzongpa, Jetsun Pema, Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė. [PG-13]

The other major motion picture from 1997 to deal with the 14th Dalai Lama, and far weaker in nearly every category. Getting to him is half the frustrating battle (and half the bloody movie), as the filmmakers align their attentions on arrogant, egocentric mountain climber Heinrich Harrer (Pitt), who sets off across the Himalayas in 1939 with fellow explorer Peter Aufshnaiter (Thewlis), spends time in a POW camp, and finally arrives in Tibet, hungry and desperate. There, he enters Lhasa and catches the attention of the young Buddhist leader, leading to a friendship on the eve of the Chinese invasion. Scenery, craft, and score (by John Williams) are of fine caliber, but the unfocused, episodic storytelling ill serves what should have been an extraordinary journey of the soul instead of the self, and the protagonist—an Austrian with Nazi ties—isn’t interesting enough to forgive how unsympathetic he is (his boyish softening in the presence of the Dalai Lama is as unexplained as it is unpersuasive). Miscast Pitt struggles with an accent that’s even less convincing than the one he employed in The Devil’s Own earlier that same year. Based on Harrer’s same-named autobiography, which was previously shot as a documentary in 1956.

45/100