Kundun

National Review, Jan 26, 1998 by John Simon

Mr. Simon is NR's film critic.

REMEMBER Kevin Costner's waterlogged Waterworld? In that apocalyptic stinker, post-Armageddon remnants of humanity jetsamed it up on the seven seas; in the current superturkey, The Postman, we get a rerun on dry land. In the new dystopia, the United States is, by 2013, mostly unpeopled desolation, though an abandoned car, vacant house, or thriving township pops up whenever required to help Costner and the preposterous plot along. The actor-director seems determined to appear as the savior of the world, although the world has yet to figure out how to save itself from him.

As customary, an army of vicious marauders, here called Holnists and led by the beastly General Bethlehem, terrorizes the few remaining civilized communities. On horseback like the Huns, they exact inordinate tribute and abduct men for soldiering, women for lust. There is no one to oppose them, except, of course, Costner. A loner who was forcibly conscripted into the Holnists but managed to escape, he finds in an abandoned jeep a postman's uniform and a pouch full of old undelivered letters. To get food and shelter from the surviving towns, he assumes the role of the Postman, a representative of the supposedly restored United States Government.

Just how he manages to deliver the letters and even bring back replies is left vague, but mail delivery spells deliverance for him and all. Before long, other young men and women are having him anoint them as subsidiary postmen, only to have Bethlehem and the Holnists vow to destroy them and those who harbor them. I cannot begin to go into the details of this, after much last-minute cutting, three-and-a-quarter-hour movie, but I can assure you that, despite some unintended belly laughs, it provides little but self-indulgent flimflam.

Thus, in a sheltering town, Abby, a stunning young woman, accosts Postman Costner with the question, "So, as far as you know, you've got good semen?" It seems her beloved young husband has had "the bad mumps," which leaves you infertile. Postner, as for the sake of brevity I shall call him, hesitates, but when Abby disrobes and invades his bed, even he proves only flesh and blood. Conveniently, his good semen impregnates Abby on the first try; later, her husband is equally conveniently killed when he tries to stop Bethlehem from carrying her off. In this ravaged but ideal world, Bethlehem, much as he tries to possess her, remains impotent. Rescued later on, Abby, much as she tries to remain faithful to her husband's memory, cannot resist the Postner, just like those weak men who finance these dreadful Costner movies.

Mention must be made of the wit in this screenplay by Eric Roth and Brian Helgeland. When the Postner tries to persuade the people that order has been re-established, he lies to them about Broadway again mounting shows by Andrew Floyd (sic) Webber. Equally fetching is the allegory, as when Abby's child is presented as "My daughter: her name is Hope." (Costner, a good father, has cast his real-life children in the movie.)

Costner is heartwarming as the reluctant redeemer; as Bethlehem, the Dick Cavettish Will Patton knows Shakespeare and Latin tags, and smiles as he murders. As Abby, the young English actress Olivia Williams is much more than Costner deserves. Imagine a fellow not above calling his monster movie by the same title as that warmly remembered intimate charmer Il Postino. Couldn't he at least have had the decency to call his film The Mailman?

As superproductions go, Kundun, Martin Scorsese's film biography of the Dalai Lama, is relatively restrained, respectful, contemplative. But it is also, like most authorized biographies, anaesthetizing. Scorsese, an action director, is not the man for the job, though he and his valiant cinematographer, Roger Deakins, strive mightily to keep the camera moving around with an exploratory voluptuousness, as if there were something of consuming interest going on. The sense of reverence is so acute that the movie becomes a kind of smellie, exuding the odor of sanctity.

The sundry Tibetan non-actors corralled in a worldwide search do very nicely, and Dante Ferretti's costume and production designs are equally praiseworthy. Inevitably, one must compare Kundun with Seven Years in Tibet: we have a choice now between the Lhasa that Jean-Jacques Annaud's team built in the Andes, and the Lhasa that Scorsese's crew erected in Morocco. Each Lhasa has virtues the other lacks, as well as fully competitive Dalai Lamas. Kundun, to be sure, gives you more of the Dalai Lama's life up to his escape to India; it is also, however discreetly, more explicit about the Chinese conquest and atrocities.

There is a glimpse or two of family life, and a little of Tibetan folkways, but, for example, only one woman, the D.L.'s mother, played by her own granddaughter. Even more than in Annaud's film, though, we get a sense of peering at Tibet through a keyhole, with the limited vantage that affords. The D.L. is shown at ages two, five, and twelve, and as a young adult. He is allowed some childish impetuosity and stubbornness but, once grown, is as pure as the snow atop the Himalayas (or, in this case, the Atlas Mountains), and as brave and devoted to his people as you would expect the living Buddha to be. The dialogue is often strange enough to feel authentic, e.g., this about the Chinese: "They are the worst of the worst -- they are worse than ghosts."