SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET

GO TO

Page 3

Kundun (The Dalai Lama) asks Harrer to build him a movie house and Harrer agrees. There is a funny yet spiritual scene where the Buddhist's who believe in reincarnation, become very disturbed at digging up the soil so the theatre can be erected. They find, that in the process of moving the soil, they are killing earthworms. Their belief is that after death you could come back as anything...earthworms included. It is these small beliefs and events that make you realise just how much these people care about and respect all life.

We watch as Kundun and Harrer build up a close friendship, each learning from the other. Harrer literally metamorphasis before your eyes and the once selfish and self-absorbed man becomes spirtually reborn.

In 1949 Communist China takes over the neutral Tibet. The pacifist Tibetans try to learn to fight, something which is foreign to their very nature but it is one of their own who ends up selling them out by surrendering the Tibetan Army to the Chinese. After all the effort, strength and courage the people of Tibet had put into protecting their country, all becomes lost when a Court Minister (Wong) thinks he is saving his people through surrender even though the Tibetans had sworn they would fight to the end.

After China has claimed Tibet we truly see the man Heinrich Harrer has become when he confronts the traitor (Wong) and in a memorable speech it is revealed to us just how much Harrer's values and principles have changed.

Heinrich Harrer finally leaves Tibet and the Dalai Lama whom he has come to see as a son, but as Kundun points out to him, he is not his son and he does not look upon Harrer as a father figure. In Kundun's own words he says to Harrer "you are much too informal with me for that." We however, get to see a relationship between a man and the Spiritual and Temporal Leader of Tibet who also happens to be a young boy...a relationship that in itself lies on an entirely different plane from that of a father and son, no less, no more, just different.

At the end of the movie, Harrer finally meets his son who at first wants nothing to do with his father. Through a gift of a music box, given to him by Kundun, Harrer finally reaches something within his son and we see the two make the journey to the summit of the mountain...father and son, finally united after a lifetime of separation.

Top

If you have found this page through a search engine click below to open up the frames that will let you navigate the other pages in this section as well as the whole site. (Note, a new browser window will open up) No Rulz

Soundbyte from the movie (85Kb)
In a letter to his son, Heinrich describes the Himalayas

Seven Years in Tibet