Seven Years in Tibet (1997)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Seven years in Tibet
Original title Seven Years in Tibet
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1997
length 129 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Jean-Jacques Annaud
script Becky Johnston
production Jean-Jacques Annaud
music John Williams
camera Robert Fraisse
cut Noëlle Boisson
occupation

Seven Years in Tibet is a feature film by Jean-Jacques Annaud , based on Heinrich Harrer 's book of the same name about his stay in Tibet.

action

Although his wife Ingrid is pregnant, traveling Heinrich Harrer , an Austrian mountaineer egocentric, in the spring of 1939 as a member of an expedition group led by Peter Aufschnaiter in the Himalayas to the Nanga Parbat climb. On the ascent, Harrer slides down an ice slope and injures his leg, but hides the handicap from his mountaineering colleagues. Shortly afterwards he saves Aufschnaiter's life with difficulty, whereby his injury hinders him, which is why he is then confronted by Aufschnaiter. Because of avalanches and unfavorable weather, the Germans have to abandon the attempt to climb against Harrer's protest. After returning to base camp, they are interned in British India because of the outbreak of World War II . Harrer makes several attempts to escape, but they fail. At the internment camp, he receives a letter from his wife, who asks for his consent to the divorce because she wants to marry a friend of Harrer's who looks after her and her young son.

Harrer reluctantly joins a group under Aufschnaiter's leadership who are planning an escape from the camp. After the success of the company he separated from the others, but met Aufschnaiter again by chance after a while and escaped with him to Tibet . There they are initially expelled because foreigners are not welcome in Tibet. But they manage by cunning to escape their guards and go into hiding in the country. The mutual dislike of the two men gradually turns into friendship on their hikes through the mountains of Tibet. Aufschnaiter's language skills and Harrer's wealth of ideas help them to cope with difficulties. Eventually they are illegally brought to the capital Lhasa , where they are taken into the home of Minister Tsarong . The career diplomat Ngawang Jigmê is also looking for her acquaintance. You work for the Tibetan government and become famous around the city. The 14th Dalai Lama also watches the newcomers and wants to get to know them, but the young prince's tutors initially refuse to allow him. Aufschnaiter marries a Tibetan woman in whom Harrer was also interested. She gives him to understand that she has disturbed his egoism and therefore preferred the more humble Peter Aufschnaiter. Encouraged by Aufschnaiter, Harrer wrote letters to his unknown son Rolf and plans to return to Austria after the war.

Meanwhile, the political situation in Tibet is growing tense. In China, the communists under Mao Zedong win the war and plan to annex Tibet to China. When Harrer learns of the end of World War II in Europe, he prepares to leave. Then he received a letter from his son telling him that he did not want any contact and did not consider himself Harrer's son. This makes the return journey seem pointless to Harrer. In this situation he received a second letter from the Dalai Lama. Harrer is invited to an audience . In the period that followed, he gradually made friends with the young ruler. He commissioned him to build a cinema and let him teach him. Harrer teaches him everything he knows about the world outside of Tibet. When the Dalai Lama's home village is attacked by Chinese soldiers who commit murders and atrocities, the crying boy calls him to his bed at night and Harrer tries to comfort him in a fatherly way.

A visit by a delegation of Maoist generals does not bring about any relaxation. They are warmly received by the young Dalai Lama, but openly show their contempt for Tibet's religious values. Under Tsarong's orders, the government tries to set up a national defense militia, with Harrer and Aufschnaiter to help. Ngawang Jigmê, meanwhile also a minister, is entrusted with the defense of a border town, but in a completely hopeless situation surrenders at the first attack and is now looking for an understanding with the Chinese. The capital of Tibet, formerly forbidden to foreigners, is occupied by the Chinese military. Harrer stays in town during the political turmoil and humiliates Ngawang Jigmê, whom he regards as a traitor. It was only when the 15-year-old Dalai Lama was declared secular head of Tibet in a solemn ceremony and it was foreseeable that he would soon have to flee that Harrer, at his urging, left the country after seven years to find his son, which the Dalai Lama gave him recommends. He gives Harrer a music box as a gift, one of his favorite possessions.

Harrer's son Rolf doesn't want to meet his father at first. However, Harrer leaves him the gift of the Dalai Lama, which arouses his curiosity. Years later, Heinrich Harrer and Rolf can be seen climbing together in the final scene. A faded-in text explains that Harrer and the Dalai Lama remained friends for life.

Reviews

“A sprawling exotic star epic that wants to describe Harrer's change from arrogant egoist to philanthropist, but misses the chance for historical and spiritual deepening. Impressive landscape panoramas are the best that the film can offer. "

- Lexicon of international film

“In his very straightforward narrative style, he strives for historical correctness as far as cinematically possible and offers the viewer more than just an entertaining opulent adventure film. (…) Despite the lack of permission to film at the original locations, an excellent camera manages to capture grandiose and convincing images. (…) The two main actors should also be emphasized, although Brad Pitt, as an irresistible, albeit egocentric "Aryan" beam man, is much better than in the role of the one who has been purified by Buddhist knowledge. "

- German film and media rating

Political Consequences

Because of their film "Seven Years in Tibet", the director Jean-Jacques Annaud and the actors Brad Pitt, David Thewlis and Jamyang Jamtsho Wangchuk were banned from entering the People's Republic of China for life .

Awards of the film

Film work

The film was shot mainly in northern Argentina , north of the city of Mendoza in Uspallata . The holy city of Lhasa was built there in months of preparation , and monks were flown in from India to Uspallata via New Delhi, Buenos Aires and Mendoza. Cooks, food and ingredients were flown in with them so that the actors really felt like they were in the situation at the time.

The train station, which in the film represents the main train station in Graz , where Heinrich Harrer says goodbye to his pregnant wife and a good friend, is the main train station of La Plata , a city south of Buenos Aires . Overall, the crew was in Argentina for six months.

A second crew was in Tibet , where they were allegedly making a documentary . The recordings served the director in various scenes.

Some scenes of the film were shot in the Asten , a side valley of the Upper Mölltal in Carinthia .

The scenes of the ascent of Nanga Parbat were filmed in Canada in the north of Vancouver . Because of the inaccessible terrain and large masses of snow, the actors and the material had to be brought up to the heights by helicopter.

Differences between film, book and reality

There are a number of key differences between the original book Seven Years in Tibet and the film. The film also deals very freely with historical facts. On set production was advised by Tenzin Tethong , a former political advisor and representative of the Dalai Lama at the UN in New York. His then 11-year-old son played the Dalai Lama in 1997 also caused Dalai Lama film Kundun by Martin Scorsese .

  • Annaud explicitly locates the opening scenes, the content of which has no relation to Harrer's book, in "Austria 1939", although officially there was no longer "Austria" in 1939, only the "Ostmark" as part of the "Anschluss" in spring 1938 "Greater Germany".
  • In the opening sequence, Annaud makes the film harrer reply gruffly to the words of an anonymous Nazi who calls him a “great German hero”: “Thank you, I'm an Austrian!” So ​​he is portrayed as reserved or even dismissive of National Socialism. In real life he had sympathized with the National Socialists since 1933 and had joined the SS and the NSDAP in 1938 . Harrer later called these accessions a “stupid mistake” and “ideological error”. In 1997, the film project inadvertently drew attention to Harrer's previously unknown Nazi past, which was made public in the run-up to the cinema release. Director Annaud decided that the film didn't need to be changed because it wasn't about this issue. However, he always suspected that Harrer had sympathies or connections with the Nazi movement.
  • An elementary message of the film is Heinrich Harrer's change from an arrogant , self-confident, successful person to an enlightened personality who is tolerant of Tibetan culture . Harrer did not describe this character development in the book.
  • The film makes Harrer's son the central theme, but neither the son nor a wife are mentioned in the book. The film woman Harrers is called Ingrid, in reality she was called Lotte.
  • In the film, the course of the escape from the internment camp in India on April 29, 1944 is shown basically correctly, but Peter Aufschnaiter is shown as the leader of the company in disguise as a British officer. In reality, Rolf Magener and Heins von Have disguised themselves as British officers.
  • The book gives no indication that Aufschnaiter should have married a Tibetan woman.
  • The arrival of the Chinese communist negotiators by plane on an improvised gravel road is fictitious and does not appear in the book. The Lhasa airport was only in the year 1956, after the Chinese invasion created.
  • The film shows Harrer and Aufschnaiter after the arrival of the Chinese troops in Lhasa; in fact, both had left the city before the People's Liberation Army arrived.
  • The final break between Harrer and Ngapoi Ngawang Jigmê is also not described in the book.

literature

  • Heinrich Harrer : Seven years in Tibet. My life at the court of the Dalai Lama . Ullstein, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-548-35753-9 (20th edition, first published in 1952).
  • Jean-Jacques Annaud , Becky Johnston et al .: Seven Years in Tibet. The film book . Ullstein, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-548-35759-8 (original title: The Seven Years in Tibet . With photos by Jean-Jacques Annaud (among others) and historical photos by Heinrich Harrer. German by Waltraud Götting and Petra Kaiser. 221 pp. ).
  • Gerald Lehner : Between Hitler and the Himalayas. Heinrich Harrer's memory gaps . 2nd Edition. Czernin, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-7076-0216-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Seven years in Tibet. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 13, 2016 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ Jury's statement - predicate particularly valuable. In: FBW -prädikatsfilme, accessed on March 2, 2019.
  3. ^ Walter Goodman: Learning to Waffle on Tibet's Precipice. In: New York Times , October 28, 1997, accessed March 3, 2019.
  4. ↑ Trevor Paetkau: Seven Years in Tibet, Heinrich Harrer ( Memento from January 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). Film review on The Open Critic , November 6, 2007.
  5. ↑ a b Rick Lyman: In Two Looks at Tibet, No Sign of Shangri-La. In: New York Times , September 7, 1997, accessed March 3, 2019.
  6. ↑ Wiliam Cole, AP: Heinrich Harrer is dead. In: Der Spiegel , January 7, 2006. Online