I don't think this is a really bad film, but from someone with the undeniable talent of Bernardo Bertolucci it's an astonishingly bad film.
Suppose an affluent American couple with no particular spiritual beliefs are approached by some Tibetan monks and told that they believe that the couple's very young child is the reincarnation of their teacher and they want to take the child to live with them in Tibet. How do you suppose they would react?
Nothing in this film is an even slightly convincing answer to that question. I don't believe anything I see on screen here.
We do, however, also get Keeanu Reeves playing the Buddha. I guess I'll allow that. (I gather Bertolucci wanted Marlon Brando to play this role. How do you get from Brando to Reeves?) The Buddha origin story is pitched at the level of a comic book made for Sunday school children.
I can't really figure out Bertolucci's attitude towards this material. It's a gorgeous looking film, as any film shot by Vittorio Storaro will inevitably be, and Ryuichi Sakamoto wrote a lovely score. It's an otherwise wildly uncompelling experience.
Suppose an affluent American couple with no particular spiritual beliefs are approached by some Tibetan monks and told that they believe that the couple's very young child is the reincarnation of their teacher and they want to take the child to live with them in Tibet. How do you suppose they would react?
Nothing in this film is an even slightly convincing answer to that question. I don't believe anything I see on screen here.
We do, however, also get Keeanu Reeves playing the Buddha. I guess I'll allow that. (I gather Bertolucci wanted Marlon Brando to play this role. How do you get from Brando to Reeves?) The Buddha origin story is pitched at the level of a comic book made for Sunday school children.
I can't really figure out Bertolucci's attitude towards this material. It's a gorgeous looking film, as any film shot by Vittorio Storaro will inevitably be, and Ryuichi Sakamoto wrote a lovely score. It's an otherwise wildly uncompelling experience.