Customer Reviews

Samsara

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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.

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

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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Himalaya is a perfect set for every movie. The landscapes, the colours, probably due to the rarefied atmosphere, the costumes and the intriguing faces of these people are worth alone a whole film. Samsara is a European-Asian co-production that has come out in 2005, with a good success especially in Europe. It is the story of a monk, Lashi, that after recovering from a state of meditation that lasted three years, three months and three days, finds himself attracted/distracted by human (sexual) stimuli. He first attempts to put his instincts in a religious perspective, meditating on the similarity between sex and death, but then gives up and goes back or better goes into the world, since he had entered the monastery at five years of age. In the village closest to his monastery he is attracted to a beautiful young girl, Pema, that reciprocates his passion. Pema and Lashi get married and have a child and Lashi works with his father in law and fights against a tyrannical and dishonest grain intermediary, contesting long lasting traditions and habits of the village. He shows his bravery by going to town to sell on his own the wheat, defends his land from a fire, and also gets beaten up by the intermediaries guards. Life goes on and Lashi finds himself attracted by a beutiful and saucy Indian girl and has an intercourse with her. This experience deeply disturbs him and makes him reflect on the sense of desire. He is again attracted by monastic life and prepares himself to give up his family life. He identifies himself with Siddharta and finds no guilt in leaving his wife and son. But at this point the story comes to its climax, because the gentle, patient, witty, intelligent Pema rebels and shows all her rage at being abandoned.

The films message is in its way revolutionary, the traditional buddhist way of life is questioned and contested. A woman discusses the belief that personal salvation and personal well being are the ultimate goal of the existence. Pema doesn't say it the way an occidental woman would but she clearly states that a family is a responsibility and there is a price to pay for sexual satisfaction, a family life and children.

I found this movie very interesting because in a rural society, with ancient ways and in the complete respect of tradition a woman makes herself heard. This is not a feminist work, far from it, but it is modern and true and very up to date because in many circumstances it is evident that personal satisfaction seems to be the only driving force in many kinds of society. Also the return towards religiosity that we are assisting to must not be at the price of family and child neglect.

The contrast between the ways of life and the moral of the story is striking and genial.

The picture is a little slow going in the first part, but the simple observation of the the costumes and colors is of the greatest satisfaction. The story differently from "Himalaya" is not out of time, because we see the town, the cars, the multiethnic society (the Indian girl, the Chinese intermediary)and this helps to contextualize. The country we see is Laddak which is probably the closest remaining to a pre-Chinese Himalayan society.

Backround music, especially the woman chants, are fantastic and give an added value to the picture.

The actors are perfect and the inexpressive face of Lashi really explains us his character. Pema is beautiful and very convincing from her first moments of passion to the battling conclusion.

I highly recommend this movie to all "himalayanophilies" like me but also to anyone interested in a beautiful and deep reflection on "self" and family.

Christy Chung is probably the most multlingual Canadian actress working in Asia(mostly Hong Kong in the '90s). It's very impressive that she's Canadian born Vietnamese, started with possibly fluent in English and French besides Vietnamese, and since winning the Miss Chinatown of Montreal about a decade ago, she managed to become a Chinese actress. She's come a long way, and now she speaks more languages than other multicultual actresses like Maggie Cheung. To see her go from mediocre Cantonese years ago to delivering all her lines in Thai in Jan Dara, and now learning Tibetan for the lead role in Samsara, she deserved the applause! Although her filmography includes mostly plain ornamental girlfriend or bombshell roles, until she surprised audiences worldwide with a refreshing and sexually daring role in Jan Dara a few years ago, and now playing an unconditionally loving wife of an ex-monk in this religious and spiritual film ultimately allowed her to prove that she's no longer just a beauty queen.

Christy Chung is actually makeup free in this movie, and she's reminecent of some of the images portrayed by Gong Li in some of Zhang Yimou's movies. She's a village woman in Tibet, and everything is extremely different from big city lifestyle. The mood of this film is rather similar to The Fast Runner. Shawn Ku played a monk who had accomplished a great deal of wisedom as a Buddist. One day his sexual temptation took over his serenity and decided to leave the temple to become a normal person and experience life's happiness and fullfill his desires since he had been a monk as a child. He met Christy and they got married eventually, and raised a family together. Just when he thought having a lovely wife and kids would be all he ever wanted, along came a beautiful and seductive Indian girl whom he couldn't resist to have an affair with. By now he realized that his true passion is not the life he was living, and he has to face the decision of a lifetime.....

Christy and Shawn Ku had some sexy scenes together, and I thought their final confrontation was a test of their acting ability, and it was very impressive to see Christy delivering long lines in tears. I think it's so great that she was willing to abandon those big budget movies for a small film like this that has good meaning and challenges her range.

This is really the best critics of Buddhism made by the director Pan Nalin, from the very land where Buddhism was born.

From the very beginning of the film, Right action, one of the ways to the Highest Goal of Buddhism philosophy, is questioned naturally when an eagle kills a sheep with a stone. But the most important critics is that one that has to do with family, which is really incompatible with the lonely path of a buddhist meditator; for a most detailed description, see please, some of the excellent reviews above.

Yes, it's a real pity that this excellent film has not been released in USA.

Note: Tibetan with English subtitles. If you live in the America's you'll need a Multi-Region player to watch this DVD.

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? Is it 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.

I saw this film for the first time in 2003 in a tiny cinema in New Zealand. When the film finished it sparked intense debate from all the viewers in the room. How often do you go to the cinema and have spontaneous discussion with other film goers? This made as much of an impression on me as the film itself. I was travelling then so by the time I got home I didn't remember the exact title of the film and no matter how I searched for it online it never showed up. Until now. I managed to locate the film a few weeks ago and watched it again as if for the first time.

Not only is this film visually stunning, compelling in its storytelling but it also makes you think. The story of Tashi and Pema raises many questions about the search for enlightenment, not least the idea that we have to live the life of an ascetic to find it. Traditionally the attainment of enlightment has been confined to men alone, but this story also questions that assumption and shows how woman may have been sitting there ahead of us from the very beginning. Watch this film with an open mind - there is no conclusion here. As in all the best stories, it leaves the ball firmly in your court.

I purchased this product after listening to the "sound-track" while practicing Qigong with my teacher. There was something so intriguing and penetrating, especially while focusing on the "Bumble Bee Song". My teacher claimed he had attempted to locate this movie, but was unable to find it anywhere. This allowed me the perfect opportunity to repay him with a gift for the many hours of personal instruction, for which he would never accept any compensation. I decided he would not mind if I reviewed it before giving it to him and I am so pleased of that decision.

The photography is breath taking, there is a sincere sense of "being there" and the production is accomplished ... not to mention the musical score I mentioned. The subtitles are clear and completed with the intention to not interfere with the flow of the dialogue; there is also a nice addition to the film which shows how the production was filmed and some great interaction and questions with the actors. If you are presently involved with your own "journey" or involved with anyone growing toward "capital T truth", I encourage you to see and share this.

Most of us did not grow up within the traditions of buddhism , but there is a great movement in the West with trying to understand why our World seems to be crumbling and why after we have either worked so hard at "accomplishments and simply owning more stuff" only to arrive at a conclusion that we still feel "hollow inside". There is so much more to life, our friends, family and the world we live in ... this fine production will gently but shockingly help you move a little further on the path ...

Nameste

Samsara, the continuous flow of life, where there is no beginning and no ending.

Samsara, a movie about a young Tibetan monk, Tashi, brilliantly and sensitively acted by Shawn Ku. His story begins with his return to the monastic life after three years in solitary meditation. Having won the admiration of his Buddhist community, he is faced with a new challenge: his sexual desires. But how can he renounce that which he has never had the chance to experience? Even Buddha, he implores his mentor, lived a full life before his enlightenment.

But, despite marriage to the beautiful and strong Pema, superbly acted by the beautiful Christy Chung, Tashi remains unable to master his desires and, despite his successes in the material world, remains unfulfilled and victim to his sexuality.

An elegant portrayal of one man's search for fulfilment, Samsara grips one with a subtle fist. Dialogue is sparse. Stillness pervades this movie; it flows with a gentle inevitability that reflects the ever-turning wheel of life itself, and yet the superb acting skills effectively communicate the depth of passions and the range of emotions that constantly drive humanity. There are some exquisite(and fairly explicit)love scenes, enhanced by a magical score. With the original Tibetan soundtrack and excellent English sub-titles, this colourful movie is a feast for the senses, and for the soul.

Remove the towering backdrop of the magnificent Himalayas and exchange the coarsely woven clothes with jeans and sweatshirts, and Samsara would still tell a universal story of love and desire, and how they affect us all for good or ill.

Ultimately, Tashi has to decide which is better: to satisfy one thousand desires, or conquer just one. And so his never-ending quest for enlightenment flows back to the beginning...