Travellers & Magicians
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Movie Reviews of Travellers & Magicians
Movie Review: Awesome, touching experience
Summary: 5 Stars
Having been to Bhutan last year, it was like going home to see this movie--the scenery, the Buddhist "walking talk" sort of wisdom, the simplicity and beauty of film making in such a setting. I was touched and highly recommend this film.
Movie Review: A Buddhist "Going My Way"
Summary: 4 Stars
Filmed entirely in Bhutan, "Travelers and Magicians" is a universal tale of a young man with big dreams and no real plan to achieve them.
A twenty-something government official is sent to a small village so remote there is no television, no nightlife, and, as far as he can tell, no pretty girls. The local entertainment consists of archery competitions. This lifestyle just will not do for a thoroughly modern young man who sports an "I (heart) New York" T-shirt and and who prefers high top sneakers to sturdy mountain boots.
The young man jumps at a chance to go to the United States. But he has to lie to his boss to get away and on his way out of town people keep stopping him and offering him their hospitality. By the time he makes it to the road, he's missed his bus to Bhutan's capital. There won't be another bus for a week, so he begins his journey on foot.
Then the fun begins as he reluctantly acquires an odd assortment of companions, including a well traveled Buddhist priest who is more than a little concerned about the young man's vague plans for making it big in America.
Instead of preaching, the priest entertains his companions with a cautionary tale about a lazy young magician who also wanted to run away from home in order to find his "dreamland."
The young man is just beginning to warm to the priest's story when they are joined by a rice paper merchant and his beautiful daughter. The pair is also going to the capital. From there, the merchant says he's taking the girl, who has been away at boarding school, back home to the very village our hero has left behind.
Although he initially dismisses the girl when the merchant explains that her test scores weren't good enough for college, he discovers that she's very bright and funny, and that they enjoy each other's company. She confides that her test scores were fine, but she's going home because her father needs help with his business.
Suddenly the lights of New York aren't shining so brightly after all. What will the young man do?
This is a sweet, funny, and gently thoughtful movie about dreams, duty, impermanence, and how small events can change the course of one's life.
This movie made me both think and smile. I hope you will let it do the same for you.
Movie Review: Well crafted film fuses noir, comedy, and multi-culti
Summary: 4 Stars
In this, his second film, Khyentse Norbu shows how skilled a filmmaker he really is. An ordained lama, he studied independent film-making in New York and here it really pays off. While his first film, The Cup, was a well done portrait of life in Bhutan, Travellers and Magicians is that and much more. Taking his cue from, among other works, the great Ju Dou by Zhang Yimou, Norbu gives us a village official who longs for the excitement and money to be had in America.
Sporting shiny white new athletic shoes, the official makes his way to the main road where he tries to catch a bus to Thimbu, first stop on his journey. But he misses the bus and soon meets up with an interesting assortment of fellow travelers--an old apple seller, a monk, and a farmer with his beautiful daughter. While waiting for the bus--or anyone driving who can give any or all of them a ride--they're entertained by the monk who tells a tale of a young apprentice magician who loses his way in a large forest and comes upon an old man and his much younger wife.
Norbu intercuts the ongoing tale with different legs of the travelers' journey on the seemingly endless road. The editing chops on display here are truly impressive, marking this as the work of a director who really knows how to make a film grab the viewer. We see the young magician lying in bed at night, thinking only of the young wife, and dissolve to the official waking up in the morning, having no doubt thought of the farmer's daughter much of the night.
This is much more than great editing; it gives us strong links between how we live our lives and how we imagine our lives should be lived. The tales we tell, the ones we remember, are those that inform how we feel we should or could do what we're not doing now. It's our memory of another story--what we read long ago, or what someone told us long ago--that gives us the unofficial subconscious laws we live by. That's what Norbu tells us in this great film.
A giant leap forward from The Cup, Travellers and Magicians is a first class cinematic work that should be seen by many.
Highly recommended.
Movie Review: Great film
Summary: 4 Stars
"Travelers and Magicians" is agreat film set in Bhutan, with the cast and creators being native Bhutanese. It is rare for films about the Himalayan region that come out in the Western world to have this kind of authenticity behind them. Films like Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet, while possessing fine cinematography and stories in their own right, are ultimately the vision of an outsider looking in, creating their own interpretation of life there.
Not only is the film great in it's own right, but it is probably one of the best to come out of the region. It is partly a "feel-good" film, and partly a lesson in perspective. This is only fitting, since Bhutan, as a country, prides itself on balancing the need to move forward into a more modern world, but without giving up its distinct culture and way of life.
Though the film moves at a slower pace, I didn't get too bored with it, or feel that it was stretching itself too long. The tale that provides the secondary narrative of the film, while a bit predictable, was important to the motivation of the primary narrative, and made you want to keep watching, if only just to see it all fleshed out, and come to fruition.
If you like this film check out "The Cup" and "Samsara".
Movie Review: Youth's quest for novelties
Summary: 4 Stars
Probably, to those, especially, first time in their lives watching with this movie depicted Bhutan, both landscapes and locals, this film is an educative, broadening a general knowledge work reflecting filmmaker's uncertainty of whether he became better in the USA while still preferring writing the books and movie-scripts in America rather than in a native village.
Lovely Himalayan landscapes and funny scenes of contemporary Bhutanese customs very much sustain a very general story of generational change and youth's quest for novelties.