June 15, 1998

Showings:
June 17 - Colonial Promenade 5, 7:15pm

Film as propaganda always has to tread the line between pure didactic, pile-driver-over-the-head point making and artistic expression. By interlinking the two in a subtle manner, true power can be achieved. Unfortunately, in its incessant hand wringing and uniformly stereotypical 'bad, barbaric Chinese' and obvious, corny dialogue ("All across Tibet, people have suffered"), Windhorse comes down squarely on the side of the simplistically didactic, and thus very seldom achieves artistry. There's even a 'whitey to the rescue' sub-plot to make matters worse. The ringing in my head from the continuous barrage didn't cease even as the grips were named as 'NAME WITHHELD' in the titles. Please. Talk about hammering home a point.

Invaded in 1950 by the Chinese, Tibet has been occupied since then and, as this film informs us, over a million Tibetans have died as a result of 'Chinese aggression' (sic). Filmed, on video, largely in Nepal (don't know whether those 'YAK HOTEL' signs in the backpacker ghettos of Kathmandu gave it away or not) with some exteriors shot in Tibet, the windhorses are perhaps the most interesting thing about this film; they're bits of paper and material containing the prayers of people scattered aloft to release the consciousness and the spirit, leaving the corporeal behind. That the spirit is always free, even if the flesh isn't, seems to be the message of the film.

The loose plot centers around the fate of three relatives as they grow up under occupation; brother and sister, Dorjee, the cynical good-timer, and Dolka, nightclub singer on the make, and their cousin Pema, a Buddhist nun, are brought together when Pema, after shouting 'Free Tibet' in a marketplace, is incarcerated and beaten close to death. Dolka has the chance to make it as a singer in Chinese, and must decide whether to loose her career or align herself with her cousin by helping her to propagate her story to the outside world via a videotaped death bed speech, the camcorder provided by a Westerner riding in to town on her white steed...sorry, I'm getting carried away.

I don't want to sound utterly negative, as the soundtrack is very beautiful with some stirring panoramas of this high land, and one has to admire the manner in which the film was made; on location in a clandestine fashion. The director and joint writer, Paul Wagner, is a documentarian, and these are the best aspects of the film - the factual information presented and the visuals of Tibetan life. As a work of narrative fiction, however, this work fails; Wagner is just too hell-bent on the propaganda, and forgets about what makes a fiction film work.

Peter Lewis A true African-American, Peter has led a peripatetic lifestle, and after graduating from UCF with a film degree, he is pondering life as another wannabe, devoting his time to working on a novel, his thesis film, a suntan and the dubious benefits of Rogaine. Other Articles I've Written