Seven Years In Tibet

Released the same year as Martin Scorsese’s Kundun, and no more successful as a film Seven Years In Tibet typifies the problems that occur when European film-makers set their films in foreign cultures. We are a long way from Hollywood of the 1950s and '60s but there’s still the imposition of Western values in the story-telling techniques (notably in the casting of the photogenic lass, Lhakpa Tsamchoe, as a romantic interest) and a susceptibility to a fascination with the exotic, not to mention the common failure to bridge the gap between historical breadth and psychological depth.

Jean-Jacques Annaud's adaptation of Heinrich Harrer's 1953 autobiographical account that results in the film title isn’t primarily about the Dalai Lama but about the Austrian Olympic medalist and mountain climbing champion (an Aryanized Brad Pitt) who is invited to be a part of a German expedition to conquer Nanga Parbat, one of the tallest mountains in the Himalayas. After many grueling adventures he became the revered spiritual leader's tutor and friend.

The film is at its strongest in its opening section when it depicts the ardours of the mountaineering campaign. It is well-staged and gives us a real sense of the life-threatening nature of the expedition. After that the film settles into a long-winded account of Harrer meandering across Tibet with his companion Peter Aufschnaiter (the incorrigibly English David Thewlis) until they settle in Lhasa. The final section of the film gives an account of Tibet’s invasion by China.

This is certainly material that justifies an adventure biography but the trouble with it is that whilst Annaud gives us plenty of splendid location photography (by cinematographer Robert Fraisse), dramatically the film lacks fire. Pitt is worked too much for his boyish good looks and his character over-sentimentalised in its redemptive arc whilst David Thewlis is simply miscast, his supposed German accent virtually evaporating as the film progresses.  Despite its impressive technical credentials Seven Years In Tibet is a film that requires forbearance.

 

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