Windhorse

Here's a not-so-good movie promoting a good cause: the end of Tibet's 50 years of subjugation by the current friends of American business, the Chinese Communists. Paul Wagner, a deservedly praised documentarian (Miles of Smiles, celebrating the unionizing of black Pullman porters; A Paralyzing Fear: The Story of Polio in America), shows no special aptitude as a director of narrative, and he's not helped by his choice of an amateur cast to dramatize his too schematic script about three young Tibetan relatives who follow three different courses regarding the Chinese. One becomes a Buddhist nun and Tibetan nationalist devoted to the exiled, verboten Dalai Lama; another is a slacker shooting pool all day in the city; the third is a pop singer willing to sell her soul to the Chinese invaders with lyrics proclaiming the love of Tibetans for Chairman Mao. The characters' travails are predictable, as are the conversions of the slacker and the pop singer to the cause of Tibetan liberation. Okay, what's a windhorse? A message on paper dropped off a mountaintop, which, catching a gust, sails to the Tibetan gods.

-- Gerald Peary