Kundun

Martin Scorsese
United States, 1997
featuring

Tenzin Thuthob Tsarong, Gyurme Tethong, Tulku Jamyang Kunga Tenzin, Tencho Gyalpo,

“Hauntingly beautiful, raptly serious and vastly ambitious” (Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune), Kundun begins with the identification of the fourteenth Dalai Lama in 1937 and traces his human, spiritual, and geopolitical travails through to his exile. Like Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun considers the role of nonviolence in the amorphous convergence between being an earthly man and a holy man. Tibetan independence activist and screenwriter Melissa Mathison (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) sat with the Dalai Lama for a series of interviews over several years and incorporated his specific recollections, dreams, and nightmares into her screenplay. Philip Glass provided the transcendent score.

Jeff Griffith-Perham
FILM DETAILS 

Screenwriter

  • Melissa Mathison

Based On

  • the life story of the Dalai Lama

Cinematographer

  • Roger Deakins

Print Info

  • Color
  • 35mm
  • 134 mins

Source

  • Swank Motion Pictures

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