Little Buddha (1994)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Absolutely the worst movie.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

In my opinion, making the film for a broad audience on religious bases is tremendously hard, however, it is achievable with experienced crew and actors. The outstanding work with the camera and choosing right soundtracks, which is almost identical with your feelings, and, most importantly, structured and well-mixed plot made "Little Buddha" piece of art in French film-making industry. Despite that film did not recoup itself and got several negative responses from critics, Bernardo Bertolucci made a great effort to think about our pathway to enlightenment through parallel story of Lama Norbu's important mission and Siddharta's story. The key element of each film is the creating specialty in the plot, and, in our case, it is parallelism. During the watch time, you feel that film tries to show the correlation between the historical chronology of Siddharta's life and Jesse's trip to the Tibet. The first example could be affinity of Dean's rejection and not believe into the specialty of his son and the King's dissatisfaction with words of astrology, who claimed that newborn boy would not be a king, as King had wished. Secondly, scenes of Siddharta's discovering another reality, such as poverty, illness, and old-age, have even more similarities with the moment when Jesse tries to catch up Raju's brother. For example, buildings, which are placed in identical places; people with rotating tools, which I suppose are used to mill the rice of another grain; and, most importantly, discovering a process of pot-making. Basing on these facts, we may assume that Mr. Bertolucci tried to show a present-day pathway to the nirvana through the connection among stories of Siddharta and Jesse. Another critical part of the film is the quality of the image and sound. Professionality of operators and designers could be tracked with the picked atmospheres for different scenes. For example, the flashback sights with Siddharta's story are expressing warm atmosphere of ancient South-East Asia through rightly chosen temples, rich and colorful costume design and other details in the background. Meanwhile, the sadness and hopelessness in Conrad's family are shown through the cold and obscure image with the big amount of emptiness in the house. All these scenes are accompanying with Mr. Sakamoto's compositions, which express exact feelings of the viewer and by that, adding the right tune to the atmosphere. Furthermore, the smooth flow from Siddharta's life story to Jesse's adventure and vice versa is always keeping viewers' attention on both storylines, which definitely supplements the plot. To conclude with, despite that the "Little Buddha" is based on the essential history of Buddhism and closely related with it, the film is worthy for a broad audience, because of its way of expressing some important thoughts about consciousness in the modern world.

Little Buddha is a bit like an historical novel. You learn, as the story develops, about Siddhārtha Gautama who, through effort but mostly through insight, breaks the cycle of life and death and is now referred to as the Buddha. This delightful lesson takes place near the end of the 20th century and unfolds as the protagonists (chiefly Lama Norbu) engages in a search for the reincarnation of a very important Buddhist (Dharma) teacher, Lama Dorje. It's a beautiful story written and directed by a brilliant filmmaker (Bernardo Bertolucci) known for his powerfully visual cinema masterpieces and this movie does not disappoint. I've been to the Bouddhanath Stupa in Kathmandu and Bernardo filmed some of his scenes at that very location and it is a magical place but he somehow made it even more magical. What a lovely story, it is hard imagining it not being universally enjoyed, I can't even conceive of the mindset that wouldn't find this film wonderful, magical and moving and most importantly entertaining! Il mio congratulazioni direttore padrone!

A great story, told by an obviously Mahayana Buddhist, where all the mystical elements were applied, but didn't actually take away from the story of Keanu Reeves as the Buddha. I guess that was the only downside for me. Keanu Reeves as the Buddha. I couldn't stop laughing, all I saw when I looked at him in the movie was him playing in Bill & Teds series. "Be excellent to each other". But for real, a good retell of the buddhas life which is what I was looking for when I started watching this movie. I found it interesting that the director chose to through the buddha's whole story in and it compliments well with the present and the little boy in seattle. I think that a lot of Buddhists would enjoy watching this because of the accuracy of the spiritual representation that makes up Buddhism, such as the Mahayana version of buddhas life, as well as how anyone can be the "Buddha" or in this case a "lama", and that's how the connection between the west and the east occur. Very cheesy movie but for those who want to know what Buddhism in its most basic form is all about, I would highly recommend watching it.

some people may see this movie as a introduction to Buddhism and educationally useful. I must say that it is not, not matches with the history terribly. but some people call that stories of Prince Siddhartha and Lord Buddha are not completely true they are myths. but even myths don't happen like how this movie was filmed. anybody can understand that by the first look at the movie. also this movie terribly alters the teachings of Lord Buddha and Tibetan traditions. you can learn how they teach real reincarnations of Lamas by reading the book of autobiography of Lama Lobsang Rampa. there are lot of things that can be talk about