Little Buddha (1994)

In my opinion, making the film for a broad audience on religious bases is tremendously hard, however, it is achievable with experienced crew and actors. The outstanding work with the camera and choosing right soundtracks, which is almost identical with your feelings, and, most importantly, structured and well-mixed plot made "Little Buddha" piece of art in French film-making industry. Despite that film did not recoup itself and got several negative responses from critics, Bernardo Bertolucci made a great effort to think about our pathway to enlightenment through parallel story of Lama Norbu's important mission and Siddharta's story. The key element of each film is the creating specialty in the plot, and, in our case, it is parallelism. During the watch time, you feel that film tries to show the correlation between the historical chronology of Siddharta's life and Jesse's trip to the Tibet. The first example could be affinity of Dean's rejection and not believe into the specialty of his son and the King's dissatisfaction with words of astrology, who claimed that newborn boy would not be a king, as King had wished. Secondly, scenes of Siddharta's discovering another reality, such as poverty, illness, and old-age, have even more similarities with the moment when Jesse tries to catch up Raju's brother. For example, buildings, which are placed in identical places; people with rotating tools, which I suppose are used to mill the rice of another grain; and, most importantly, discovering a process of pot-making. Basing on these facts, we may assume that Mr. Bertolucci tried to show a present-day pathway to the nirvana through the connection among stories of Siddharta and Jesse. Another critical part of the film is the quality of the image and sound. Professionality of operators and designers could be tracked with the picked atmospheres for different scenes. For example, the flashback sights with Siddharta's story are expressing warm atmosphere of ancient South-East Asia through rightly chosen temples, rich and colorful costume design and other details in the background. Meanwhile, the sadness and hopelessness in Conrad's family are shown through the cold and obscure image with the big amount of emptiness in the house. All these scenes are accompanying with Mr. Sakamoto's compositions, which express exact feelings of the viewer and by that, adding the right tune to the atmosphere. Furthermore, the smooth flow from Siddharta's life story to Jesse's adventure and vice versa is always keeping viewers' attention on both storylines, which definitely supplements the plot. To conclude with, despite that the "Little Buddha" is based on the essential history of Buddhism and closely related with it, the film is worthy for a broad audience, because of its way of expressing some important thoughts about consciousness in the modern world.

Little Buddha is a bit like an historical novel. You learn, as the story develops, about Siddhārtha Gautama who, through effort but mostly through insight, breaks the cycle of life and death and is now referred to as the Buddha. This delightful lesson takes place near the end of the 20th century and unfolds as the protagonists (chiefly Lama Norbu) engages in a search for the reincarnation of a very important Buddhist (Dharma) teacher, Lama Dorje. It's a beautiful story written and directed by a brilliant filmmaker (Bernardo Bertolucci) known for his powerfully visual cinema masterpieces and this movie does not disappoint. I've been to the Bouddhanath Stupa in Kathmandu and Bernardo filmed some of his scenes at that very location and it is a magical place but he somehow made it even more magical. What a lovely story, it is hard imagining it not being universally enjoyed, I can't even conceive of the mindset that wouldn't find this film wonderful, magical and moving and most importantly entertaining! Il mio congratulazioni direttore padrone!

After reading some of the comments in the message board section, I felt that florin_andrei's comment from 2002 was best -- "Right, no tits, no explosions, no Ah-nold to break jaws and limbs, and to top it all, it expects you to think! That's outrageous! Worst movie ever!" That's the problem with many of the comments and some of the reviews of this film here on IMDb. Some of our viewers went to see a Keanu Reeves movie because he was "hot". And I guess he was in his own way. But when you think about it, this was not a KR movie. It was an ensemble film. KR wasn't on-screen even half of the time.People do like to hit on Keanu Reeves. And, while I doubt many would say he was ever the world's finest actor, with $3,599,064,053 worldwide aggregate box office (rank #31), he must have been doing something right. I look at some of the criticisms here and just laugh. For example, the accent was wrong. Even though I'm Buddhist and traveled fairly extensively in parts of Asia, I've never actually met a person from Nepal, so I have no idea whether his accent was appropriate or not, particularly since there would be NO APPROPRIATE ACCENT that we could fathom from 2,500 years ago. Let's see, how many people from Siddhartha's village spoke English 2,500 years ago????? Reeves did nicely here, and I quite admire how he emaciated himself to be able to portray the fasting Buddha.If one wants to criticize some acting here, I suggest targeting in on Chris Isaak, who turns in a stunningly bad performance. I don't know how he has done in acting since, but this was pitiful. Stiff. Unnatural. He didn't even move realistically.Another of the criticisms of this film is that, in terms of Buddhism, it is not very realistic. Really? Is that why 3 actual Tibetan incarnate lamas have significant roles in the film? Some people say that American boy is not realistic. I don't know about that. As a teacher/school administrator, I've met plenty of precocious children, and this performance seems rather realistic. After all, he isn't meant to be the average all-American boy; he's supposed to be different.Ying Ruocheng is superb as the main lama in the film. And Sogyal Rinpoche's performance was charming, and about as realistic as you can get since he is actually a leading Tibetan lama in real life.The performance of the other two children in the film are interesting, particularly the girl with self-importance and self-promotional skills...that surprised me a bit...I wonder if that would be realistic for someone like that to be a reincarnated lama.Special mention should be made of the photography. It is interesting how the cinematographer gave the film a different warmth depending on whether they were in Seattle, or Tibet, or back in Buddha's time. Quite lovely, really. And the sets and special effects helped tell the basic bio of young Buddha's life.Financially, this was a disaster at the box office. Which is what I would expect since it was clearly a niche film with an all too big budget. Casting Keanu Reeves may have been an attempt to cash in on a rising star's box office mojo, and clearly some of our "reviewers" went to the film to see KR, rather than because of the subject of the film.For me, a lot about this film comes down to how I feel as a Buddhist about non-Buddhist Americans (and others) watching this film. Does it present Buddhism as it really is? Yes and no. I'm a mix of a Theravadan (as in Thai) Buddhist and a philosophical Buddhist, and the film doesn't portray those schools at all (beyond the fable-istic telling of the life of Siddhartha/Buddha; it is a depiction of Vajrayāna Buddhism. My impression is that it depicts Vajrayana Buddhism fairly well, but that gives the impression that Buddhism is based on animism (e.g., the appearance of the seer), and to be honest, there is a lot of animism in Buddhism in the way it is approached in the Old World.Normally, based on only the cinematic aspects of this film, I would give it a "7". However, I'm going to bump it up to a "8" because it has one quality that separates it from typical popular cinema -- it is something different and unique. And not many directors or actors are willing to tackle something that is really different and a potential failure at the box office.

The little Buddha is about Lama Norbu and other monks seeking the reincarnation of their teacher, Lama Dorje. In their search, the monks believe that the reincarnation of Lama Dorje is in Seattle and is a little boy named Jesse. Jesse is interested in Buddhism, although, does not know much about it. After being hesitant at first when Lama Norbu asks Jesse to return to Bhutan with him, Jesse's father takes Jesse to Bhutan and Nepal. Once there, Jesse meets the other candidates of Lama Norbu's reincarnation, Gita and Raju. Throughout this journey Jesse learns more and more about Buddhism's history and practices with the book Little Buddha.After watching this movie, I learned how seriously monks take reincarnation. Even though Jesse is an outsider of the Buddhist religion, the monks still go through great lengths to find the reincarnation of Lama Norbu and teach Jesse about Buddhism. I also learned that a reincarnation could be broken up into multiple people. In the end, when we figure out that all three of the candidates make up Lama Dorje, we find out that Raju is the body, Gita is speech, and Jesse is his mind. These three aspects of Lama Dorje are also large aspects in Buddhism. I really enjoyed this movie, and could not find any major imperfections. I enjoyed how the movie showed the storybook, Little Buddha, with Siddhartha's life and Jesse's journey. One thing I would have added is more of an ending of what the children decide to do after finding out they make up Lama Dorje, however, chances are all the children wouldn't stay in Bhutan and it is probably better left hanging then having it be a pointless journey.Overall, I think this movie does a good job teaching the viewers about Buddhism, all while bringing the viewers through Jesse's journey. This movie provides a great opportunity for western audiences to learn about Buddhism. Instead of telling you about Siddhartha, this movie shows you who he was and what he did. Not to mention this movie also has a great story line about a boy's journey with Buddhism and Asian cultures.