TIBET: A BUDDHIST TRILOGY / Graham Coleman (1979)

April 6th, 2005 by Scott Marks

Slow, painful death!

Tibet: A Buddhist Trilogy (1979)

Directed by: Graham Coleman

Written by: Graham Coleman

Genres: Documentary, Spiritual four-wall

Aspect Ratio: 1.33 : 1

Running Time: 134 min.

Q: What did the Dalai Lama say to the hot dog vendor?

A: Make me one with everything.

That Henny Youngman chestnut, Kundun, and Howard Stern’s puppet Stuttering John asking His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama if his subjects every greeted him by saying “Hello, Dalai” mark the extent of my knowledge of Buddhism.

My personal weekday prayer ritual generally commences bright and early at San Diego’s Temple of Cinematic Enlightenment, the Hillcrest Cinemas. While there are at least two dozen active critics in town, it is very seldom that you will find more than six or seven turning up early for those fuzzy foreign pictures with all the talking written out on the bottom. As one confided, “I’m Joe Hollywood. I don’t like that subtitled stuff.”

On this particular morning, the crowd wanting an advance look at Tibet: A Buddhist Trilogy was smaller than usual: three print critics, the wife of one critic with two Buddhist friends, and a fourth woman whom I later found out was there for strictly for the content. I wouldn’t pass up a free movie on a dare.

Critics are peculiar creatures of habit. For instance, we all sit in the exact same seat for each screening. Jean Lowerison has a bad back and needs to get up, so she’s parked all the way in the back on the aisle. Duncan Shepard is equally as distanced from the screen on the far aisle, opposite side. David Elliott is a bit closer, but still off to the side, and so on.

As for me, be it the AMC Mission Valley #47 or the CineramaDome, you can always find me fourth-row-center. Don’t ask. Long before I ever attended a critic’s screening, it became apparent that it’s better to have “them” behind you than in front. It is bad enough that audiences are going to talk no matter what. One doesn’t need the added distraction of people getting up to make endless bathroom or concession runs. And while patrons may have finally learned not to make or receive calls in mid-movie, that hasn’t stopped them from flipping on those goddamned blue lights every five minutes to see who called.

With all due respect to my colleagues, people who sit a mile from the screen and/or off to the side are violently insane psychopaths; the type of godless creatures that would commit violent acts in their grandmother’s neighborhood. My proximity to the screen is admittedly intense, but the center “sweet seats” are the only way to go. The further you sit from the middle, the more illumination you lose and with contemporary cinema being as dim as it is, you don’t want to miss a moment’s brilliance.

Not only don’t critics sit near each other at Hillcrest screenings, it would be downright unthinkable to speak to a fellow journalist while the film is running. Imagine my shock (and relief) when about halfway through Tibet: A Buddhist Trilogy a hand tapped me on the shoulder and a voice whispered, “Never in all my life did I feel in need of an appearance by Richard Gere.” It didn’t startle me in the least. Right about that time I was considering sawing off my leg for a distraction.

While not out to narc my fellow critics, this one, we’ll call him “Ethel,” has never delivered a more appropriate review. A spiritual documentary on the subject of Tibetan Buddhism was eagerly anticipating . After an all-too brief ten-minute historical overview, it transformed into a training film on how to be a monk.

The Fisher-Price PixelVison cinematography documented ritual after ritual, most with the benefit of sub-titles, some without. It was like being pulled into Jiffy Lube for an oil change and instead received a precise tutorial on how to build a Toyota.

Five minutes passed and Ethel took off for the lobby. After a beat he returned with a check of the time. It was 12:17. That meant we still had a half-hour to go. To paraphrase Elmer Fudd, “I twied and I twied Dawai Wama.” Fow…, I mean folding my notepad, I quietl ygot up and made my way towards the safety of the red exit sign. The only drawback to sitting fourth-row-center at a press screening is that early departures do not go unnoticed.

Such was not the case, for five paces behind me strode Ethel with the third critic trotting close behind. The unidentified woman declared the film “Beautiful! Magnificent! And Exquisite!” She would have loved to see it through were it not for a 1 o’clock appointment she couldn’t break. Some believer!

Hearing voices in his lobby, Super-Manager Chris Principio came trotting down the stairs. “I thought there was still a half-hour left,” he observed. As if rehearsed, the three of us chimed in unison, “There is!”

A small part of me is ashamed to admit that I lasted all the way through Basic Instinct II and started an exodus from Tibet. If ever a film cried out to be screened in a Church basement or packaged as a Barnes & Noble “how-to” video it’s this one. Strictly for those who worship the all-encompassing beauty of Buddhism, not cinema. Non-believers will just have to do make do with Kundun.

[rating; 0]