Product Details

• Actors: Shawn Ku, Christy Chung
• Directors: Pan Nalin
• Language: Tibetan
• Subtitles: English
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00081IM2Y
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #117,470 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Satisfying One Thousand Desires", May 30, 2005

By 

Brian E. Erland "Rainbow Sphinx" (Brea, CA - USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Samsara (DVD)

Note: Tibetan with English subtitles:

Lashi (Shawn Ku) has lived in the monastery since the age of five. Now a man in his twenties he has just completed an arduous three year meditation in total isolation, thus winning for himself the admiration of the Tibetan community. However something has changed within the young monk since his return from his solitary retreat. He now finds himself filled with the desires of the flesh, repeatedly awakening in the morning with soiled robes, a sure sign of the sensual nature of his dreams during the night.

Lashi realizes that he cannot renounce those pleasures in life that he has never had the chance to experience. He leaves the monastery and travels to a nearby village, the home of Pema (Christy Chung) a young woman with whom he had a recent and brief encounter. He falls in love, marries and their union is blessed with a son they name Karma. Unfortunately, with the passing years Lashi still finds himself unfulfilled and further from enlightenment than ever.

What is the truest path? To seek earthly fulfillment or to renounce the world and look within? The unanswerable question comes to a most unexpected conclusion.

I love this movie! Filmed in the Himalayas, the cinematography alone makes the movie worth watching. The production values are extaordinary and the cast is superb. Shawn Ku is amazing as the monk who can't make up his mind and Christy Chung may even be better as the wife and mother who tries to hold it all together.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterpiece which we all in USA missed, September 24, 2005

By 

Sophie Hall "Sophie Hall" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Samsara (DVD)

Samsara is a real masterpiece. This film was released in more then 60 countries and grossed US $ 20milion besides winning 30 plus international awards. The film was acquired by Miramax (now Disney Studio) but they never ever released it in the US. Now is your chance to discover this sublime story. Dont miss it. Sophie Hall. NYC

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicate, evocative exploration of desire, April 5, 2007

By 

Daiho - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Samsara (DVD)

The debut feature from Indian director Pan Nalin, Samsara is a lovely, understated meditation on desire as seen through the life of Tashi, a Buddhist monk who leaves his order to explore the world outside the monastery.

The story opens with a dirt-smeared, matted-haired monk being carried out of a cave at the end of a three-year mediation retreat and afterwards being rewarded the rank of kenpo. Despite his elevation of the rank of teacher, Tashi remains afflicted by dreams of the erotic, dreams that cause him to question his vows, vows that he has kept since entering the monastery as a child of five. He wonders how the rest of the world lives, how the Buddha himself once lived before giving up his princely life to search for enlightenment. Sometimes, Tashi reasons, we must own something in order to renounce it.

Driven by an encounter with a beautiful village girl, he leaves the monastery to find her, figuratively and literally crossing a river, leaving his monk's robes on the bank and entering completely and wholly the world of samsara, our ordinary, work-a-day world known to the Buddhists as the realm of illusion, desire, hatred, and suffering.

There Tashi finds Pema, the village girl of his dreams, and a life of happiness and fulfillment as a husband, father, and farmer. In this life he encounters also much suffering in jealousy, deceit, anger, rage, physical violence, and most deeply in his own sexual desire, which leads to betrayal, infidelity and loss of self-esteem.

Unlike in many films in which these subjects would be weighted down with cloying dialog, director Nalin Pan cuts talk to a minimum, communicating with the viewer through the actors' expressions, the movement of camera, and through Cyril Mornin's music (as performed by Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra). With a handsome cast and the stunning vistas of the Himalayan foothills of Ladakh, India to fill out the camera, Samsara is a beautiful film for the eye and ear.

It also offers something for the mind, including an ambiguous ending that will leave you wondering which road Tashi chooses. Just as he is to head over the bridge leading to his monastery, where he has decided to return after his infidelity, he comes across his wife Pema, who ends the film with a series of penetrating questions on the relationship between the sexes and the role of women in Buddhism.

The question of Tashi's final direction is in the end put to the viewer - what are your desires? Where do they lead you? How can you make a meaningful life?

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