Herald Rating: * * * *
Cast: Jamyang Lodro, Orgyen Tobgyal, Lama Chonjor, Godu Lama
Director: Khyentse Norbu
Rating: PG
Running time: 95 mins
Opens: Now showing Academy
Review: Peter Calder
Whatever fame this sweet, charming and whimsical film has brought to its players, we may be sure they will be dismissing it as another of life's many transitory vanities.
For virtually all The Cup's cast are real Buddhist monks - resident members of Chokling Monastery, in a Tibetan refugee settlement in the Himalayan foothills of Bhutan and where the film is set. And the director (who also wrote) is one of Tibetan Buddhism's most prominent incarnate lamas.
The project was buoyed up by various Buddhist traditions - oracles and yogis were consulted and the director sponsored several pujas, the noisy Buddhist rituals which generate auspicious circumstances for any undertaking.
But the result is far from solemn. With a vigour and simplicity which recalls the Ealing comedies, it tells the story of a bunch of soccer-mad novice monks desperate to see telecasts of the 1998 World Cup.
Much of the film has the flavour of a boarding school comedy as the novices test the discipline of the severe Geko (the monastery's equivalent of the deputy principal). Led by the 14-year-old Orgyen (Lodro) who has a Ronaldo T-shirt under his maroon monastic robes, several of them sneak out to watch games at the local teahouse. But matters gather pace when Orgyen gets permission to rent a satellite dish to watch the final between Brazil and hosts France (the exiled Tibetans are devoted fans of the latter team, since France has been a conspicuous supporter of Tibetan independence since the Chinese invasion in 1959).
The director has plenty of fun at our expense - the scene in which Geko explains to the unworldly abbot that soccer is "two civilised nations fighting over a ball" is drily funny (the abbot decides it's OK as long as there is no sex) but the film soars on the artless generosity of the performances.
The producers note that the actors were "briefed scene to scene, dialogue was prompted and memorised on the spot and most scenes were completed within two or three takes - a testament to the actors' monastic discipline and concentration." Yet the impish humour and natural ease which imbues the performances seems at times more inspired than disciplined.
The Cup's history and provenance has probably earned it greater acclaim than it deserves if judged strictly on its merits. Its narrative arc is predictable and although it deftly grafts Buddhist concepts of non-attachment onto a story which is immediately digestible by Westerners, the moral is somewhat obvious.
But it's immensely exotic and unselfconscious - and it's not every day you get the chance to see a movie made by a lama.
The Cup
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.