Monika’s Pensieve

{FILM DIARY}

The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Way of Life (Canada/Japan, 1994)

Seen: Saturday, 14th November 2009 (cinema)
Runtime: 46′
Director: Barrie McLean
Production House: Mistral Films, NHK, National Film Board of Canada (NFB)
Plot: A documentary on death in the Buddhist tradition and how it differs from Western perceptions of death.

Scene From the Film

Impressions In Short
I found the completely different attitude towards death quite fascinating. It was odd to see a film which was so completely about death and yet it was calm and optimistic - it made the thought of death kind of exciting ;)

More About the Film
It’s the first time in ages that me and Kin had significantly different feelings about a film. I think it was because our expectations were very different - I had absolutely no idea such a book even existed, while she’s done some pretty extensive reading on the topic.
The film is more about the “A Way of Life” part of the title than the “Tibetan Book of the Dead” bit. I felt that the book was a sort of excuse to talk about death in a way people in the West aren’t used to talking about it.
It’s shot in two realities. One in Ladakh (a region of India where Tibetan culture has been left relatively unchanged for centuries), where an old man has died and the correct rituals are performed after his death. The other is in North America, where a non-profit organization is trying to spread the idea that death is not something to be feared and is helping people with terminal illnesses to deal with what’s coming.
I thought these complemented each other very well. The scenes from North America were the ones that really carried the message (Western culture needlessly associates death with fear and failure), while the scenes from Ladakh gave it validity. What the film was trying to say felt much more believable to me when I saw so many people living by those ideas - clearly this way of thinking about death can work.

Recommended?
Yes. For me the treatment of death was quite something - I can’t think of another film I’ve seen which portrays death like this.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation (1994, Canada/Japan)

Seen: Saturday, 14th November 2009 (cinema)
Runtime: 45′
Director: Barrie McLean
Production House: Mistral Films, NHK, National Film Board of Canada
Plot: A documentary explaining the rituals and concepts about death in the Buddhist tradition.

Scene From the Film

Impressions In Short
Unlike Kin, I liked this one less ;) It concentrated more on the rituals themselves than on the message. Consequently, the whole of it was shot in Ladakh.

More About the Film
In the previous film, the story we got from Ladakh was that of an old man, who had approached the end of his life and died peacefully. The rituals had been performed successfully and he had come to rest in peace.
In this one the premise is different - we follow the death of a man still in his youth, who died very suddenly. The rituals are not met with success and the whole process is therefore much more complex, which gives the film the opportunity to get into much more detail about it all.
Initially this new premise engaged me - there was sort of more suspense to it. But I was soon put off by the differences in the film’s style. For one, it used a very cheesy animated effect - illustrating the dead man’s soul as a naked red figure flying around the room. I found that a bit silly :]
I think I could have stomached that though. What I got really annoyed by was the scenes between the man acting as the spiritual guide and his student. These were clearly staged (not genuine documentary footage) and they looked so fake. Their purpose was, of course, to facilitate the explanation of the process to the viewers, but I found I didn’t really need them. In fact they felt repetitive most of the time. If anything important was missing in the documentary footage, they could have taken advantage of the voice over, so I don’t understand why they resorted to staging stuff.

Recommended?
I’d recommend the first one more. I think this one is primarily for people, who want to understand the rituals better.