Pourquoi Bodhi-Dharma est-il parti vers l'orient?

The first time I rented this movie, I saw it with a friend. We quit halfway through after groaning with boredom, then spent the rest of the evening making fun of it. A year later I tried it again, and have seen it five times since. It is extraordinary and is more gripping and absorbing each time I watch it.

There is of course no plot, only a loose story which illustrates, both in its whole and many fragmentary parts, core questions and ideas of Buddhism regarding the impermanence of all things and the corrupting nature of human desire. I know only a little about Buddhism, but what little I had read since the first unsuccessful viewing was probably what helped me see it subsequent times. Like Buddhism, it employs profound calm to upset some fundamental attitudes about the world and makes these disturbances fascinating: suffering, loss, the desire to hold on to things, and the vanity of intellectual growth.

This is however not by any stretch an "ideas" movie. It was made by a painter and remains very much a kind of tone-poem for the screen. I recommend it highly.

Yong-Kyun Bae is an art professor at a university in Korea. "Dharma" was virtually a solo effort by him and it took ten years to complete. The movie has little plot to speak of, and consists of a series of images, a slide show of moving images about a man's path to Enlightenment. They are strikingly beautiful and force the viewer to contemplate one's own life and existence. On the surface, all of the images are serene but underneath them lie deep power and a palpable spiritual yearning. As one reviewer aptly put it, "This movie is not about Zen, it is Zen."

Bae has made a second movie which was released in 1997. It is also very contemplative but unfortunately is nearly incomprehensible.

I first saw this film several years ago, and I was told that it was so hard to understand. Then I studied more about Zen Buddhism, and slowly but surely, I did begin to understand.

The movie is considered the best film about Buddhism, and rightly so. The director, a professor at the Buddhist Dongguk University in Seoul, took seven years to make it and used non-actors to play the parts.

He recently remastered the image and dialogue in a new DVD release, but unfortunately, no extras or featurettes. This film is one of the greatest made, and I feel sorry that it hasn't gotten the proper DVD treatment it deserves.

Nonethless, this movie is a meditation about Buddhism, life and death, and our raison d'etre. Definitely not to be missed.

A strange thing happened to me while watching this movie for the first time: About halfway thru, I lost the desire to pay attention to it. It's not that I lost interest, just that I lost the feeling of need or obligation to pay attention in order to get the most out of it.

Cinematic enlightenment? Or just fatigue?

Hmmm... probably a little of both, combined with the knowledge that it I can always watch it again.

Cinematic reincarnation!

This really is a different movie, and I can see it being played on my VCR time and time again, at times when I want to "watch something", but don't...

There's just so much to it, so much to think about, so much to see, that one time thru will only give a little sip. And I'm afraid that there are times when it does help to read the subtitles -- although much of the time there are no subtitles.

The thing about it is, rather than "teach" Buddhist philosophy, it "gives the experience". It follows its three characters on the path, and gives lessons on letting go.

There is a scene where a young boy returns to the grave of a bird he'd buried a few days before: Unable to let go of the bird, unable to accept death, he finds that yes, life goes on, but in ways that he was not ready to accept or understand! In an instant, he's startled by the cry of another bird, and falls from a ledge into a pool of water (there's a lot of water in this movie), where he thrashes about like he's drowning -- and then he stops trying to swim, and simply allows himself to float. Get it?

Lots of eye candy, lots of mind candy. If you're a Buddhist, or in any way interested in Buddhism, you must not miss it for anything! If however you're not interested in the least about Buddhist philosophy, but ARE interested in cinematic excellence, see it. It's a masterpiece!

Many people have, at one time or another, asked the questions "Who am I, why am I here, what is the purpose of life?" This film addresses these issues as well as, and probably better then, any movie has since the film adaptation of Siddhartha or the more recent Little Buddha. Truly wonderful cinematography, acting, and a storyline that weaves traditional Zen stories/analogies into the works. The absorbing and meditative quality of the film itself makes it a classic work of Zen and film.