Kundun

9/6/2022

If anyone were ever to question the undoubted skill of cinematographer Roger Deakins, then they need only watch this beautifully crafted story of the youth of the 14th Dalai Lama. Filmed in the Moroccan Atlas mountains, for obvious reasons, Martin Scorsese provides us with a lavish, colourful and thought-provoking postulation on just how this young man was selected, after a four year search, to become the venerated spiritual leader of a peaceful nation of farmers and monks, buried deep in the Himalaya mountains. The boy was but two, but already there was a fear amongst these folks for whom time has largely stood still, that their neighbour has designs on their homeland. As the boy ages into youth, those threats manifest themselves more practically and by the end, the man has little choice