Sunrise/Sunset: Dalai Lama XIV

(from http://media.ifccenter.com/images/films/sunrise-sunset_592x299.jpg)


When imagining the Dalai Lama, my conceptions were limited to a solitary man, a figure made political less for his own actions than for those of his followers, who preach that which he meditates upon. Yet in Sunrise/Sunset: Dalai Lama XIV, a film by Vitali Manski I saw recently as part of IFC’s Docuweeks, His Holiness appeared as a kind of celebrity-figurehead for the “Eastern Way,” condensing his meditation periods into a several month, hibernation-like exercise and teaching via television and loudspeaker.
The movie was billed as an in-depth day-in-the-life view of the Dalai Lama, but by the end of it I felt no closer to him than if I had watched an old-fashioned presidential interview. Sure, I saw some personal moments while he ran on the treadmill and watched TV (only to happen upon footage of himself on a talk show…coincidence? I’m undecided…). But I had no further insight on someone who is supposedly the world’s most insightful man. His day was spent both holding a class and a press conference in which others eagerly jotted down his opinions, but they unfortunately sounded like any sort of droll sermon reiterating the dictums of living a good life.
I can’t say why I’m so surprised. Why should the Dalai Lama be so different from any other prominent religious leader, like the Pope? It was something about Buddhism that I thought might be different, the less politicized of the religions maybe, the least organized and most organic. But in a similar vein, the book The Art of Happiness, in which author Howard C. Cutler, M.D. spends many months interviewing His Holiness on his perspective of happiness, comes to the same formulaic conclusions about the importance of meditation, breath, forgiveness, and state of mind.
Both the book and this documentary did provoke interesting, if not forced reactions from their narrators. In The Art of Happiness much of the text condenses Cutler’s train of thought on happiness, while the Manski of Sunrise/Sunset spent the second half of the film attempting to tie the teachings of the Dalai Lama to the parts of the world he visited. It is this section of the film which seems wholly separate and quite desperate to connect to its earlier half, focusing mainly on overpopulation. By the end, it is this subject which seems to catch the documentarians fancy much more, and it becomes obvious that this is the film he truly wanted to make. Perhaps Manski thought it would sell if the Dalai Lama were involved? It seems, unfortunately, to be his true purpose.