Travellers and Magicians (2003)

What a beautiful movie!

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Blistering performances.

In Travellers and Magicians, Tibetan Buddhist director Khyentse Norbu spins two parallel stories that deliver one message -- happiness can be discovered simply by being in the present moment. Picking up from his internationally acclaimed feature, The Cup, Norbu's second film is filled with gentle humor, gorgeous scenery and music, and astute observations of the foibles of human nature. Shot entirely in Dzongkha, Bhutan, a tiny country of 700,000 people in Central Asia, Norbu assembled a cast of non-actors including a monk, a banking executive, and a government researcher, and all perform with distinction. In the first story, a young university graduate working in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan longs for a more exciting life in America but discovers the quiet places in his mind when he misses the bus to his first destination. The second tale is about a young student of magic who also seeks to escape his mundane life in his rural village but must confront passion and jealousy when he loses his way in a forest.Dondup, a government officer, played by former Bhutan producer Tshewang Dendup, wears Nikes, sports a T-shirt that says I love New York, listens to rock music on his portable stereo, and has walls cluttered with pictures of scantily clad Caucasian women. He says he would rather pick apples in America than continue to live in his isolated village. When Dondup receives the letter he had been waiting for, he packs his suitcases and sets off for greener pastures but misses the bus and is forced to hitch a ride on the mountain road. There he meets other travelers: an aged apple peddler (Apo Dochu), a Buddhist monk (Sonam Kingu), a rice paper seller and his lovely nineteen-year old daughter Sonam (Sonam Lhamo). As they wait for the next vehicle to arrive, they listen to a story serenely told by the Buddhist monk.In the fable, the restless Tashi (Lhakpa Dorji) is tricked by his brother to enter a world of magic and illusion. Leaving his village on a magic horse, he becomes lost in the woods but is rescued by an old farmer. When he discovers his passion for the farmer's seductive young wife Deki (Deki Yangzom), however, he must deal with dark emotions beyond his experience. Travellers and Magicians has a natural beauty and charm and tells an important message - that we can be very happy just by being aware of and handling what is in front of us. As the poet Shakyamuni put it, "One who…clearly grasps the present deepens his state of life". If you are not fond of spiritual messages, however, you can simply enjoy the stories and the natural wonders of a pristine land before, as Norbu says, "there are 200 McDonalds, 100 Burger Kings, 100 Starbucks, 50 KFCs, polluted water, and deforestation".

I did not find this film preachy or disappointing. You're seeing a Bhutanese film. What exactly did you expect?? I thought it was hilarious, the characters were fantastic, the story is a classic in any culture. It is particularly poignant, however, in a culture that has so far been largely untouched by the 'advances' of the outside world. The scenery was beautiful, of course, but the shots, the cinematography was also outstanding. The humour was subtle and clever. Having a real story, and a good secondary story, does not make it preachy in my opinion. It's a coming of age story, it's a love story. 'Foreign' does not necessarily mean it's a great film, but in this case, I think it works.

The comments I read on this movie about scenery and vista are a little over stated. Some Buddhist life philosophies come through - but take a lot of time and film to make simple points. The movie is good, but it could have been a lot better. Some scenes were shot in the same place, eg: you see the same part of the creek/river as they move slowly along a dirt road to Thimphu. The movie is filmed along a roadside as five people travel to Thimphu. A Buddhist monk tells them stories to pass the time; and then ,cut-in scenes of the Buddhist monk's story are seen(by the viewing audience)on film. A continuity-goof appears in this movie, the Buddhist monk disappears from the back of the truck, only to reappear again in the next scene. I was told by other commentators in this forum to go and see this movie on the wide screen, for its grandeur etc. but I felt a bit disappointed, it could have waited for the DVD to come out. I was hoping that the travelers could have reached Thimphu, I would have liked to see the city and its people. This story/plot reminded me of many other movies I have seen, rural person sets out to go to the big city, gets an education along the way.At the end scene, I was waiting for Dandup (the main character) to walk back along the road towards the young girl that he had fallen for. I think the director/writer missed a big opportunity here to serve the audience's expectations.As is my nature, I became suspicious that a large sports runner/jogger company had sponsored this movie; Dandup's runners are constantly shown. I understood that the director was demonstrating the clash of culture thing of Dandup wearing these runners in a Bhutan culture, but there were far, far too many shots of the runners. The movie could have been called, "Dandup's runners".

In this, his second film, Khyentse Norbu shows how skilled a filmmaker he really is. An ordained lama, he studied independent film-making in New York and here it really pays off. While his first film, The Cup, was a well done portrait of life in Bhutan, Travellers and Magicians is that and much more. Taking his cue from, among other works, the great Ju Dou by Zhang Yimou, Norbu gives us a village official who longs for the excitement and money to be had in America.Sporting shiny white new athletic shoes, the official makes his way to the main road where he tries to catch a bus to Thimbu, first stop on his journey. But he misses the bus and soon meets up with an interesting assortment of fellow travelers--an old apple seller, a monk, and a farmer with his beautiful daughter. While waiting for the bus--or anyone driving who can give any or all of them a ride--they're entertained by the monk who tells a tale of a young apprentice magician who loses his way in a large forest and comes upon an old man and his much younger wife.Norbu intercuts the ongoing tale with different legs of the travelers' journey on the seemingly endless road. The editing chops on display here are truly impressive, marking this as the work of a director who really knows how to make a film grab the viewer. We see the young magician lying in bed at night, thinking only of the young wife, and dissolve to the official waking up in the morning, having no doubt thought of the farmer's daughter much of the night.This is much more than great editing; it gives us strong links between how we live our lives and how we imagine our lives should be lived. The tales we tell, the ones we remember, are those that inform how we feel we should or could do what we're not doing now. It's our memory of another story--what we read long ago, or what someone told us long ago--that gives us the unofficial subconscious laws we live by. That's what Norbu tells us in this great film.A giant leap forward from The Cup, Travellers and Magicians is a first class cinematic work that should be seen by many.Highly recommended.