Milarepa: Revenge

[sabaijai]

Milarepa: Revenge

Bhutan/India, 2005, 90 min

Directed by Neten Chokling

Cast: Orgyen Topgyal, Kelsang Chokie Tethong, Jamyang Lodro, Jamyang Nyima Tashi

Genre: Drama

Format: 35mm, Color: Color, Aspect Ratio: 1.85, Sound: Dolby Digital SRD

Section: New Voices

Milarepa, Tibet's greatest meditation master, lived as a yogi at the end of the eleventh century. Born into affluence, Milarepa watched as their estate was stolen by an ambitious uncle. To avenge this injustice, Milarepa mastered the arts of black magic and assassinated his uncle's family and friends. Almost immediately Milarepa felt great remorse for his brutality and set out to undo his bad karma. Guided by a spiritual teacher named Marpa, Milarepa endured many physical hardships and mental challenges designed to purify his negative actions. Ultimately, after a series of strict cave retreats, Milarepa attained spiritual enlightenment. Soon after, disciples flocked to him requesting his teachings. Milarepa became a great teacher, a master at sharing his wisdom and insights, renowned for his unusual methods and ascetic lifestyle. One day Milarepa's closest disciple, Rechungpa, requested, “Milarepa, for the benefit of myself and all of your students and for those people fortunate enough to hear about you in the future, please tell us the story of your life.” And so the story begins...

screenings:

02/19, 7:00pm SIAM PARAGON #13

02/22, 4:00pm SIAM PARAGON #07

Milarepa

[camerata]

Getting tickets is dukkha to the max. I gave up when I saw the queue of over a hundred on Saturday. Sunday it was sold out for the 7pm performance. After waiting in the advance reservations queue for half an hour I did manage to secure a ticket for the Wednesday afternoon performance. Oh, well. A good excuse to take a half day off work, I suppose.

[sabaijai]

Getting tickets is dukkha to the max. I gave up when I saw the queue of over a hundred on Saturday. Sunday it was sold out for the 7pm performance. After waiting in the advance reservations queue for half an hour I did manage to secure a ticket for the Wednesday afternoon performance. Oh, well. A good excuse to take a half day off work, I suppose.

A good excuse indeed. I'm in BKK for the festival now. The only film I've seen so far was Pen-Ek's Invisible Waves. I may try to see the Wed screening of Milarepa. I have a press pass so can show up 15 min before any screening and usually get a ticket. I got into Oliver Stone's master class today even though it was supposedly sold out.

It would really be nice if they had a way to get the tickets online.

[camerata]

A good excuse indeed. I'm in BKK for the festival now. The only film I've seen so far was Pen-Ek's Invisible Waves. I may try to see the Wed screening of Milarepa. I have a press pass so can show up 15 min before any screening and usually get a ticket. I got into Oliver Stone's master class today even though it was supposedly sold out.

It would really be nice if they had a way to get the tickets online.

Yes. It looked to me like at least 60% of the people queuing for tickets were foreign tourists. I wonder how many locals and residents actually go to these festivals?

[Nordlys]

Is there anyway I can reserve the ticket for tomorrow's show by phone or on internet? Or do I have to be there to reserve/buy the ticket?

[sabaijai]

Is there anyway I can reserve the ticket for tomorrow's show by phone or on internet? Or do I have to be there to reserve/buy the ticket?

You have to be there ...

[camerata]

It turned out to be a pretty good movie with a couple of surprises before and after.

To begin with, the film was introduced by Ajahn Sulak Sivaraksa. The story of Milarepa, Ajahn Sulak said (in Thai), was the story of evil people doing evil things, who are defeated using black magic. We have an evil person doing evil things here right now, he continued, and we should get rid of him - but probably not with black magic. "Lai Thaksin!" he said, drawing laughter and applause from the Thais in the audience.

The film is unusual in that it is directed by a Tibetan monk and features the same Father-Son, Abbot-Monk team who starred in The Cup. It's a fairly straight tale of injustice and revenge followed by remorse, but it's the only film I've seen that features the ancient Tibetan art of lung-gom-pas running - covering immense distances on foot at almost superhuman speed. Apparently, Revenge is the first part of Milarepa's life. A second film will describe how he embraces Buddhism and attempts to rid himself of his bad karma.

If I had to compare Milarepa with The Cup I'd say the latter is better because of its original and quirky story and its humour. There were a couple of things that bothered me about this movie. For a start, there is hardly any Buddhism in it - that will be coming in Part 2. The actor who plays Milerapa, and who was such a character in The Cup was very different in this one. He plays Milarepa as a simple village boy but he doesn't change at all after he becomes a powerful sorcerer. He is the same village boy and he doesn't seem to understand the power he has. Maybe it makes sense since he is doing everything at the urging of his mother, but a little more charisma would have been welcome.

By contrast, the actress playing his mother really stands out and most of the charisma comes from his real-life father, who plays the sorcerer. Another thing that bothered me was the lung-gom-pas scene. We see the character writing a mantra on the soles of his feet, start walking slowly, and then he zooms off in a Matrix-style ripple. Some of the audience laughed because the effect was cartoonish, like Bugs Bunny or Road Runner, but it wasn't meant to be funny. I think it was partly inexperienced directing and partly the location - the character is on the top of a mountain instead of on flat ground.

The descriptions of lung-gom-pas by Alexandra David-Neel and Lama Govinda are fascinating and the scene could have been done better than this. They should have had the character go down to lower ground and then start walking or running faster and faster before disappearing. I think there is a scene in one of the Terminator movies that has a cyborg running at superhuman speed, but I guess James Cameron had a bigger budget too.

After the movie there was a question and answer session with the director, the producer and the distributor. The director was asked what advice he would give to any director trying to make this type of film in future. He said, "More action and some love scenes." As to the reason he made the film, the producer said that if just one person was persuaded not to take revenge after seeing the movie, it would have been worth making. Very few other interesting questions but after 10 minutes two of the cast appeared on stage. Although they didn't say much, Kelsang Chukie Tethtong (who plays Milarepa's revenge-obsessed mother) is a classical Tibetan singer and songwriter, and she was happy to sing for the audience. Her vocalization of the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum and a song about jealousy had a haunting quality about them and were much appreciated by the audience.

More info at http://www.milarepafilm.com/index.htm.

[sabaijai]

Sounds like a great evening, I wish I could've made it. Thanks for the review, camerata.

[Nordlys]

And here's the picture of the Bhutanese director Neten Chokling Rinpoche and some of the cast on stage during the Q&A session after the movie (+ farang producer and interpreter to the right).

[camerata]

Ah... as I suspected, the movie's website says it's the leading lady's voice on the soundtrack. And you're right, the director is actually Bhutanese.

[camerata]

The movie is now available on DVD, but just titled Milarepa (subtitle: "Magician, Murderer, Saint"). No sign of Part 2, though.