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Film critics love Travellers and Magicians (2005), but, although I loved the photography of the places and people of Bhutan, I had trouble getting the point of the film. Images and scenes stick in my mind, but to what end? As the titles implies, the movie tells two parallel stories which are related in some way. In the first story, a young government official infatuated with America leaves his rural post on the chance of getting a visa to the USA and becoming an apple picker. But because he misses the bus, he must hitch-hike with several travellers, including an old man with a beautiful 19-year old daughter.There is a hint that the restless young man may return to the village and marry the girl. In the second story, which the travelling monk tells, a smart younger brother gives an irresponsible, girl-crazy older brother a magic potient. The older brother travels to a dark forest where he stays with an unhappy young wife and her cranky old husband. The brother and the wife start an affair and plot to kill the husband, with disasterous results. After a couple of months, the Buddhist themes slowly sunk into my Western mind. The first story illustrates in somewhat complex fashion one of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths: Desire is the cause of suffering. To clarify, not all desire is bad. Unwise desire causes suffering, and clinging to a desire long passed usefulness causes suffering. The young government official might look to Westerners like a typically restless, rebellious young man, but from a Buddhist perspective he is ridiculous. He has a good job and a good education, but he wants to give them up to become an apple picker. He is respected and needed in the remote village, but he wants to go where he will be neither repected nor needed. He lives amid a rich culture but tries to fill his life with the superficialities of a foreign culture. Standing is a lush pasture, he believes the grass is greener over the hills. The young man’s change of heart is realistically complex, not black and white. He considers relinquishing his desire for all things American when he is attracted by the old man’s daughter on the journey. She is beautiful. But more importantly, she embodies the Buddhist belief of respect for your parents. The old man says that his daughter has just graduated from high school but is staying home to help him because her marks were not good enough to get into college. In a quiet fireside chat, however, she tells the young government official that her marks were plenty good enough for college but that helping her aged father was more important. As the movie ends, the young man has not decided to return to the village and try to marry the young woman, but we sense that he will. His decision is not because of a satori, a sudden insight into the the Buddhist truth about desire. Rather, it is because he is attracted to the physical and cultural beauty of the young woman. Such is the power of the movie, that I believe his realization will come years down the road as he lives in a more traditional Buddhist community. The second story illustrates one of Buddha’s precepts in the Eightfold Path. Although the precept is translated many ways, it says, in essence, to avoid sexual misconduct if you do not want to mess up your journey to enlightenment. Exactly what sexual misconduct is remains vague. As a monk might say, If you are truly aware, you will know it when you see it. This realistic vaguery creates the complexity in the second story. The young man, largely driven by hormones and a jejeune sense of nobility, has an affair with an old man’s young wife. The old man treats his wife poorly, sometimes hits her, and more or less holds her captive. She is profoundly unhappy. The young knight enters on his steed, but things go wrong, suggesting that a wiser man would have avoided what was not a heroic rescue but rather sexual misconduct. Although this story and theme initially seem unrelated to the main story of the travellers, it is connected because the young government official is attracted to the young woman travelling with the group. We hope and trust that theirs will be a wiser union. Although it takes time and effort to wrap your head around a foreign culture and religion, it is well worth the effort.
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