Hema Hema

Khyentse Norbu is a film-maker belonging to the lineage of the finest Asian masters, Hiroshi Teshigahara and Satyajit Ray. This is a feast for careful placement of movement in frame, all the while retaining plot. It is an art-house, "bardo" (gap) movie, but narrative and plot twists are present for those who are able to withstand a somewhat still contemplative movie, and it works as a history -- even though quite a weird one, which is something Norbu is aiming for.

Of course, the director is a major guru in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition (Khyentse Norbu, when we take his mask, is known as The Infallible Source of Refuge Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche). So, this movie is taken by his followers as direct teaching, a powerful transformative message to be integrated as reflection in one's own practice.

While people with slight knowledge of Buddhism will recognize themes, and even capture some nomenclature (hidden in the very well thought of subtitle translation), those with no interest or knowledge in the religion, but who like film and weird experiments (and a twilight-zone fringe feeling of sorts) will enjoy it for sure.

For people with an artistic eye, the masks in themselves are quite captivating. I would surely watch even a series of stills of this movies for quite some time and remain entertained.

The director faced some backlash in his native country, and even accusations of blasphemy, due to using seeming religious imagery in scenes around sex and violence. Yet, Khyentse Norbu is a refined artist scholar with a vast knowledge of film, culture and the human mind. The Japanese nubero bago comes to mind -- in that someone refined as Hiroshi Teshigahara, a flower arrangement master, made sensual movies and psychologic science fiction, featuring weirdos, outcasts and the more marginalized aspects of Japanese culture. "Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees" also comes to mind, as well as Shohei Imamura. But the art direction in this Hema Hema comes directly from Satyajit Ray (something that is actualy even clearer in Norbu's last effort, "Vara"). Khyentse Norbu knows what he likes, and he is quite able to put the spot on what is good and make the lineage shine.

"Be who you really are!" This slogan, which has been pushed by the West to the position of absolute truth, has no ethical and moral justice, just as the evil deeds of the hero are the real result of their own, the postmodern modern society is often faced with such a difficult problem: we are shrewd in all knowledge, but at the same time shake the foundation of good and evil, there is no more good and evil, if not the buffer of all kinds of traditional forces, that rational, scientific, godless new world, is a terrible hell, is a way for no one to guide. Everyone will have to be in a state of displeasionment under the desire of the naked self.

The Western world's "God is dead" makes ethics the measurements of interests and norms of violence. Without interests, without violent machines such as the police, there will be no place for morals.

In the dense forest, after the white-faced god who hears the cry for help and defys his own life dies, how will morality save us?

As a Khyentse directed movie, Hema Hema points directly to human nature. It makes us think that there is no possibility of relief, whether in the norm of others or in our own desires, and that only endless reincarnations keep making choices that will not be right in any case. We suddenly found that the Buddha, who had proved his way under the Bodhi tree two thousand years ago, was so right that no matter how free you were, if you left the right guidance, what else end you would be getting, but commiting fouls again and again.

Twenty-four years later, the hero wearing a double-sided mask back to the dense forest, a joy and a sorrow, the main face is sad, because he still has the knot in his heart, the back is happy, because after all, he seems to have some understanding in his heart.

Finally he was willing to take off his mask and begin the road of redemption.