Phurbu & Tenzin
西藏天空
China, 2014, colour, 2.35:1, 118 mins.
Director: Fu Dongyu 傅东育.
Rating: 6/10.
Good-looking, 1950s Tibet drama is hobbled by bitty development on the personal side.
STORY
Lhasa, Tibet, spring 1944. Due to political instability, an English teacher is forced to flee, but before he goes he shows his young pupils a documentary about the western world, including images from London. In his class is Ganden Tenzin, the young lord of the House of Saja, who grows up friends with Phurbu, one of his family’s serfs. When Phurbu is involved in an incident involving the Dalai Lama’s car, he is sentenced to have his eyes gouged out; instead he becomes a monk in Tenzin’s place, taking the name Lama Tenzin, when it is found that the two boys seem to have a kind of spiritual empathy. Following the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, signed in 1951, the PLA enters Lhasa in Oct 1952. Tenzin (Ngawang Rinchen) is uneasy, and Phurbu (Lawang Lop) appears to have an empathetic fit. Despite locals’ unease, PLA doctor Yang Jin (Yang Xue) takes care of him. By spring the following year, the monks are still hostile to her, even though she has by now learned Tibetan; after Tenzin argues her case, she is allowed to treat Phurbu with medicine for his attacks rather than leaving him to just the monks’ prayers. Meanwhile, the PLA troops are slowly starving, as the Tibetans refuse to sell them their grain. Yang Jin solves the problem but the monks and Tenzin’s own family remain suspicious of the PLA. In summer 1958, Tenzin returns from studying in Shanghai, and meets Yang Jin, who is now pregnant by her PLA husband. During anti-Han Chinese rioting that same year, she is attacked in the streets by monks and, during an argument between Phurbu and Tenzin, falls down some steps and loses her baby. Dopjee Rinpoche (Tobgyal), the grand lama, says it is time for Tibetans to fight for their political and religious freedom with their lives. On 19 Mar 1959 the Dalai Lama and main officials of the Tibetan government flee in the night to India amid further rioting. Tenzin’s parents also leave, and Tenzin himself, angry and drunk, rapes servant girl Yangchen (Sonam Dolgar), who is Phurbu’s sister and also a friend of Yang Jin. Phurbu tries to kill him but Tenzin flees and narrowly survives. Subsequently, democratic reforms begin in Tibet, and on the Indian border Dopjee Rinpoche dies. By spring 1965 Yangchen already has a young daughter, Nyima, from her rape by Tenzin. Now humbled, Tenzin returns to Tibet to teach and to reconcile with both of them. In the meantime, his and other nobles’ houses have been taken over by emancipated serfs and slaves. Staying in a dormitory, he bumps into Phurbu and finds that both of them are in the same boat – being investigated as “reactionaries”. For the first time in years they manage to talk without quarreling. A Chinese surgeon, Wang, removes the blood clot near the retina that has been causing Phurbu’s head pains and attacks of blindness. Meanwhile, monasteries are pulled down and electricity lines put up by the Chinese. But not until spring 1980 do Phurbu and Tenzin finally settle their differences, with Tenzin reclaiming his name from Phurbu and the latter reclaiming his.
REVIEW
Two Tibetans find their boyhood friendship torn apart in Phurbu & Tenzin 西藏天空, an ambitious drama spanning the 1950s and early 1960s that mixes social, religious and political elements into a personal drama. Given the troubled time period, it can’t help but also be a de facto portrait of Tibetan-Chinese relations, which often overwhelm the central story. With a screenplay by Sichuan-born, half-Tibetan writer A Lai 阿来 – whose 1998 novel The Dust Settles 尘埃落定 was made into a 2002 TV drama starring Liu Wei 刘威, Song Jia 宋佳 and Fan Bingbing 范冰冰 – the film is still the most balanced portrait yet of the period by a Chinese production. Politics aside, it’s a beautifully shot movie, full of the usual Tibetan-Buddhist ceremony, that’s dramatically hobbled by a bitty, datelined story that finally devolves into melodrama near the end but has some striking moments along the way.
The plot’s basic driver is a schematic friendship between two social unequals – young noble Tenzin and one of his family’s serfs, Phurbu – that was practically never meant to be. Early on, Phurbu is saved from having his eyes gouged out (for an accidental slight to the Dalai Lama) by becoming a monk and adopting Tenzin’s name, meaning that all his praying is done on behalf of his master. Effectively rendered nameless, Phurbu starts having fits of head pains and temporary blindness – which the monks try to cure by prayer but a cute PLA doctor by more scientific methods, setting up the subsidiary theme of science vs. superstition. As tensions escalate between locals and the PLA, leading to rioting in the late 1950s, the young men’s friendship suffers, as well as the lives of others in their circle.
The film’s sympathies are clearly with Phurbu, a serf whose class eventually benefits from Chinese reforms that abolished slavery and serfdom at the end of the 1950s. Passionately portrayed by 29-year-old Tibetan actor Lawang Lop 拉旺罗布, in his first leading role on the big screen, he comes across as a likeable character who’s a victim of a theocratic, backward-looking society; more problematic is young noble Tenzin, stiffly played by Ngawang Rinchen 阿旺仁青, whose cultural confusion (especially after a period studying in Shanghai) is never properly developed and declines into drunkenness and rape that sets the two men on a collision course. Veteran Tibetan actor Tobgyal 多布杰 (the taciturn villain in No Man’s Land 无人区, 2013) brings plenty of authority to the role of the grand lama but, with the two leads’ friendship not driving the film in the way it should, it’s left to the minor female cast, led by TV actress Yang Xue 杨雪, 33, as the PLA doctor, to bring some touches of real feeling to the drama.
In his first feature, TV drama director Fu Dongyu 傅东育 directs professionally, with no personal signature. Production values are top class, with the reported RMB14 million budget more than up on the screen, especially thanks to the lush widescreen visuals of d.p. Zeng Jian 曾剑, known for his more indie look on the films of Lou Ye 娄烨, plus Buddha Mountain 观音山 (2010). Shooting in Tibet province started in summer 2012 and was spread over nine months. The film is also known as Tibet Sky, a literal translation of the Chinese one.
CREDITS
Presented by Shanghai Film Group (CN). Produced by CPC Shanghai Publicity Department (CN), CPC Tibet Autonomous Region Committee Publicity Department (CN), Shanghai Film Group (CN), Shanghai Film Studio (CN), China Movie Channel (CN), Huaxia Film Distribution (CN), Shaoxing Saco Cultural Communications (CN).
Script: A Lai. Photography: Zeng Jian. Editing: Yang Hongyu. Music: Hao Weiya. Art direction: Zhan Dui. Costumes: Chen Minzheng. Sound: Tao Jing. Visual effects: Zhuang Yan, Gu Pinglu.
Cast: Lawang Lop (Phurbu), Ngawang Rinchen (Ganden Tenzin), Sonam Dolgar (Yangchen, Phurbu’s younger sister), Yang Xue (Yang Jin, PLA doctor), Tobgyal (Dopjee Rinpoche, grand lama).
Release: China, 15 Apr 2014.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 18 Aug 2014.)