Reel Talk
Sundance 2006
angry monk-reflections on tibet:
World Cinema Competition: Documentary

What a fabulous title. But director Luc Schaedler, who's stumbled upon a wonderful subject for his documentary, fails to unearth very little of Tibetan Monk Gendun Choepel's legendary anger.

Choepel, a Buddhist monk in the early 20th century, felt the need for connection between Tibet's stagnant and unchanging culture and the world around it. He traveled India, Sri Lanka, and Tibet, brought back priceless lost texts, and wrote exhaustively about his experiences. Eventually, he was silenced by imprisonment.

Very little visual evidence is left of Choepel's fascinating life; only a few pictures. So Schaedler re-traces Choepel's steps, with beautifully shot modern scenes of the places he visited in his extensive journeys.

It's difficult to connect with Choepel, with no footage of Choepel's life and even less emotion shared by the filmmaker. The viewer is left with the feeling that Choepel may have done and said many important and underappreciated things%u2014but that we don't know him any better than we did before the film started. Connection with the subject is so vital, and Schaedler allows us almost no real understanding of Choepel.

Grade: C