FIND MOVIES
Movie List
Loading ...
or
Find Theaters and Movie Times
or
Search Movies

Review: The Unmistaken Child

A fascinating, if disturbing, look at how the Dalai Lama's enlightened sausage is made
By LANCE GOULD  |  July 15, 2009
3.0 3.0 Stars

 

After the 2001 death of Tibetan Buddhist master Lama Konchog, his disciple Tenzin Zopa is charged with tracking down his reincarnation. Despite hints from his superiors' divinations — among them that his master's reincarnation will be found in a one-to-one-and-a-half-year-old rinpoche, or "precious one" — the task is equivalent to finding you-know-what in a Himalayan haystack.

Israeli documentarian Nati Baratz trails Zopa on his four-year sojourn through Nepal, Tibet, and India. It's a fascinating, if disturbing, look at how the Dalai Lama's enlightened sausage is made. As uplifting as the discovery of Konchog's reincarnation may be, it's mitigated by the peculiar hardships faced by the title four-year-old.

Reincarnated master or not, Baratz captures the quotidian joy of a little boy playing with a battery-operated crane — and the heartbreaking loneliness he faces when his parents are pressured to leave him in his new monastic home.

Related: Immaculate reception, China, Tibet, and the Olympics, Review: Thirst, More more >
  Topics: Reviews , Culture and Lifestyle, Religion, Dalai Lama,  More more >
| More


Most Popular
ARTICLES BY LANCE GOULD
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   HIGH AND LOW CULTURE FROM JAPAN  |  June 02, 2010
    Attention, admirers of quirky kitsch and over-the-top aesthetics: hit PAUSE on that Belle and Sebastian record for a second.
  •   GOING FOR GOLD GLOSSARY  |  February 17, 2010
    The Summer Olympics are fairly easy to comprehend for the average couch tuber: people running, hoisting, swimming in synch — all fairly quotidian activities.
  •   THE PHOENIX CLEANS UP AT NENPA  |  February 10, 2010
    Was 2009 a good year for newspapers?
  •   RAINBOW NATION  |  January 28, 2010
    After a torturous history of being treated like second-class citizens, the black population in this country stunned the world by pulling off the unimaginable: voting a black man in as president.
  •   INTERVIEW: OZZY OSBOURNE  |  January 29, 2010
    Long before he bit the heads off bats and doves, Ozzy Osbourne worked in a cheerless abattoir in the hardscrabble Aston section of Birmingham, England, where for 18 months he held such titles as "cow killer," "tripe hanger," "hoof puller," and "pig stunner."

 See all articles by: LANCE GOULD