79 people said Kundun was Awful? Yes, they did.

If your intentions truly are to critique “Kundun” as an art form, then you surely are entitled to your opinion. I too felt “Kundun” was far from scoresese’s best work. But anyone can at least appreciate his vision to be able to capture the mysticism that is Tibetan Buddhism/culture.

I however have strong doubt about your intentions. It is quite clear from some of your other posts on this message board that you do indeed have a personal agenda against Dalai Lama. I only wish I could understand why you have such hatred for a man who has dedicated his life in the pursuit of universal peace and harmony. He has witnessed hundreds of thousands of his Tibetan followers massacred simply for believing in what he stood for. Yet he only has empathy for those who committed the genocide, and prays for their well being. If such act of humamity and love infuriates you, I really am concerned for you.

You have claimed to be an advocate of reason, rationality, democracy, freedom, liberty and equality, yet you detest the very person who truly epitomizes these values. Whatever your ulterior motives are, I do hope you will find peace with yourself, and not let this rage devour you from inside.

first of all, the dalai lama has contempt for nothing, thats why people like him, not because hes "exotic"
secondly, george bush did say that god had chosen him to spread the word!
he said that god told him to run for president and his primary advisor is god. and his policies are clearly christian.

and thirdly (and longestly), i know sombody whose sort of like you, or he holds similar belifes, he's always saying somthing interesting but he just looses sight of his goal and goes way to far after hes talking for a while. but you are just so bitter and absolute about everything. i try in everything i do to maintain an open mind so that if somebody can argue a convincing and acurate case i won't be to stuck in my ways to change my outlook. and by that i don't mean that i follow anyone who can string together pretty words, i mean that i'm open to a strong argument. but none of your arguments have any strength. your articals are by people who ignore evidence and use radicalised arguments (and not radicalised in the good way, i'm always up for the occasional radical movement). and they're only slightly less embittered then you. you seem like a really crusty, embittered, sad old man or (like the other person said) fresh out of grad school and aiming to "stir the turd" as they say.
I have nothing against what your goal is, of pursuing freedom, democracy, equality etc. i'm very much for all of those things, and in a way that is not perticuarly mainstream, i'm deffinatly unusual. I think we have more in common than i'd like to admit at this point because i'm so against you on the issue of the dalai lama. hes just not the tyrant you claim him to be.
even if you have legitimate complaits about the old fashioned method of running tibet, your being far to close minded in your approch. you sort of throwing out the baby with the bathwater when its critically important that we're very very careful about what aspects of tibetan culture we let go of.
also, you seem to forget that any problems you have with the old ways of tibet are not issues this dalai lama had anything to do with. he was found at the age of somthing like four or five and spent most of his life as the dalai lama being sheperded around from class to class to prayer to prayer all day by the monks in charge of him. he spent only a fairly brief period in control without a regent. and almost all of that period was taken up with dealing with china.
as i said earlier, you do raise legitimate issues about the social order of the tibetan people, but where you go wrong with it is that you take it to an extreme. you say that they were all serfs with no sense of human rights. and while it can be argued that they fit the definition of serf in that the land they owned was owned by a landlord or a monastery, your putting it in an ulra negative light. it doesn't mean they had bad lives, its not an ideal situation, and its not modern or somthing that should be brought back. but they weren't suffering and in many cases they weren't hurting at all. they are a fairly simple, humble culture.
I give you this example:

"Ms Dhondup Chodon comes from a family that was among the poorest social strata in independent Tibet. Reminiscing her life before the Chinese occupation in her book, Life in the Red Flag People's Commune, she said:

I belong to what the Chinese now term as serfs of Tibet. ... There were six of us in the family. ... My home was a double-storeyed building with a walled compound. On the ground floor we used to keep our animals. We had four yaks, 27 sheep and goats, two donkeys and a land-holding of four and a half khel (0.37 hectares). ... We never had any difficulty earning our livelihood. There was not a single beggar in our area."

then i have this larger excerpt to supliment it:

"The present Fourteenth Dalai Lama attempted to introduce far- reaching administrative and land reforms. He proposed that all large estate holdings of monasteries and individuals be acquired by the state for distribution amongst peasants. He created a special reform committee which reduced land tax on peasants. The reform committee was authorised to hear and redress complaints by individuals against the district or local authorities. He approved the proposal for debt exemption submitted by this committee. Peasant debtors were categorised into three groups: those who could not pay either their accumulated interest or repay capital were freed from debt altogether; those who could not pay the interest out of their annual earnings, but had saved up enough to repay the capital, were ordered to make repayments in instalments and those who had become wealthy over the course of years were made to pay both capital and interest in instalments. The Dalai Lama ordered that in future no transport service should be demanded without the special sanction of the government. He also increased the rates to be paid for transport service.
Famine and starvation were unheard of in independent Tibet. There were, of course, years of poor harvest and crop failures. But people could easily borrow from the buffer stock held by the district administrations, monasteries, aristocrats and rich farmers."

Now i know your still concerned that the evil dalai lama will find a way to enslave his subjects just as soon as he can get his country back in his grip so i have another excerpt which is a very short summery that you can get the full outline of, as well as a lot more on the official government in exile's website, which i'm sure your not going to think is worth a *beep* because its a website run by that monerous tyrant and hes just lieing through his teeth so he can rape the women and children once their lulled into a false sense of sucurity. but, these are official actions already taken by the government. its not within his power anymore to stop them. as soon as tibet is back in tibet control all of proposals and outlines go into effect and he can't stop them cause people are already appointed to run them independently. and if he tries, at least you'll be able to march up to him and say "i read your outline and your backing out of it. i won't let that happen" and i'm sure you be everybodies hero.

"The guidelines for Tibet's future polity stated:
Future Tibet shall be a peace-loving nation, adhering to the principle of ahimsa (non-violence). It shall have a democratic system of government committed to preserving a clean, healthy and beautiful environment. Tibet shall be a completely demilitarised nation."

also...

"On 10 March 1969, the Dalai Lama announced that on the day Tibet regained its independence the Tibetan people must decide for themselves as to what kind of system of government they wanted"

and i should point out that hollywood and high fashion have not influence my views on tibet at all, i was a tibetan supporter before tibetan buddhism was the "in" religion in hollywood and nyc.