CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

t_maly The movie really seemed promising - an average Joe in a Bhutanese village falls under the spell of America and opportunity and sets off on a journey toward a different life. Along the way, he meets a monk who lectures him on 'the grass isn't always greener on the other side' and a farmer and his young daughter who may give him reason to stay.The idea seemed promising. The main character, I found really annoying. So incredibly foolish, truly believing the hype of America. I suppose there's something to say about how the things we are captivated by are very often things we are the most ignorant of.But at the same time, I didn't find the small village life appealing, either. Perhaps I'm outgrowing my Buddhist interests and am starting to not quite agree with Buddhist philosophy, not anymore. I'll spare the rant. I don't necessarily disagree (I do think the main character was really stupid), just that there's more to living in this world than thinking so black and white. You can't summarize happiness into a philosophical debate. But oh well.Story wise, I enjoyed the sub-story of the student wandering into the woods to find a beautiful woman and her overprotective old husband, but felt that it took up too much time from the main story that it somewhat took away that story's strength. The movie ended way before I felt it should have. The conflict was just barely starting to develop, when the movie ended. Good stories require a protagonist who is met with a dilemma, and handles it in either a foolish or a wise way. Perhaps this protagonist handled it in a foolish way, but I was hoping for some sort of transformation, that the guy was more than just some fool ready to believe American media propaganda. However, I felt that the conflict did not reach a climax to really portray his bad decision. It almost felt like the story ended before he was even really truly contemplating the dilemma.Honestly, I would have left too, despite the girl. I don't think going to America would solve all the protagonists problems. I don't think there is one single panacea to our unhappiness. However, I do think that living a stale, isolated, dull life can very much be a large part of our unhappiness. My perspective is that when things don't change in our lives, we lose our passion, our joy. We depend too much on others for everything, and no matter what that means, we'll be unhappy at some point, never truly satisfied. My perspective is that true happiness is a life of curiosity, adventure, experimentation, travel, learning, creativity, sharing within community, and mastery of survival and living. There's no one thing or place that can make us happy. And that means not even where we are, this supposed place that is 'good enough' because it's handed to us. Even in the simplest and least industrialized of societies, there still are rigid social structures and lifestyles that tear away at our freedom. Happiness comes in being capable of handling life's challenges, and being given many challenges. Variety and diversity, met with gusto. And maybe loving each other along the way. Too much tradition, superstition, culture - that can easily get in our way of being truly free. I don't think that we as individuals were ever meant/designed to do just one thing with our time. Perhaps division of labor is more the root of our unhappiness than 'craving' or 'desire'. Perhaps when we divide our tasks and specialize in doing one or two things, we leave ourselves dependent upon others for the entirety of our survival - and in the process, find ourselves at their mercy, helpless, powerless. We never truly see the power within ourselves, what we are truly capable of, how well we can thrive in life if we have some intelligence and creativity.

rowmorg At the outset of this charming fable, the postman receives his monthly pay. "Lots of money now" comments someone as he emerges from the headman's house. "Bah, less than an American makes in a morning!" exclaims the disgruntled worker.Yes, even in Bhutan, they've heard about the fabled American way of life, just as that way of life commences a rapid decline, with monopolistic corporate global hegemony stripping Americans of jobs and a decent standard of living and the flow of petroleum that fuels their civilisation beginning to peak.Dondup is the type to match action with words, and he's lined up a contact at the US Embassy in the capital who will get him into the USA via a dodgy immigration form like the ones the 911 hijackers supposedly filled out in Riyadh. Dondup loves smoking, pop music on his ghetto blaster, cutting a rug in his room and body-building. As his T-shirt declares: he loves New York.However, as the celluloid runs and we get the flavour of life in Bhutan we start wondering how long it will be before Dondup is on Prozac in some hole in suburban LA engaging in petty crime to get by and dreaming of returning to his homeland. Fortunately, a fable told by his fellow hitch-hiker, plus the prospect of marriage to a dishy 19 year-old maiden, returns him to his senses. The audience's relief is palpable.This is a film that mildly imparts the important insight that America is no longer a land of which to dream. If you haven't acquired the minimal attention span of the typical Hollywood consumer, requiring a thrill a minute just to keep awake, it's well worth a viewing.

festrada The second film from Buddhist director Khyentse Norbu (his first film is 1999's "The Cup", "Travellers & Magicians" is a beautiful, funny, spiritual and understated piece of cinema. The film involves two stories about two men, both on very similar journeys in very different worlds, with two very different outcomes. Dondup (Tshewang Dendup) is an important chief officer in a remote village in the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, but soon realizes that he can not stay there his whole life and longs to travel to his dreamland called America. He would rather see himself picking apples in the U.S. than live a mundane life in his village. And so he begins his journey, hitchhiking his way closer to his dreamland. On the way he meets a feisty monk (played by a funny Sonam Kinga), an old apple seller, and a paper maker & his young daughter Sonam, whom Dondup slowly begins to grow an attraction for.During the journey, the monk tells Dondup and the group an old fable that parallel's Dondup's journey and quest for a better, more exciting life. The film then inter-cuts back and forth from Dondup's story to Tashi's story. Tashi (played by the charismatic Lhakpa Dorji) is a restless farm boy studying magic, who dreams of one day leaving his boring village. While having lunch with his younger brother, he unexpectedly embarks on a journey of his own where he meets an old recluse named Agay (Gomchen Penjore) and his beautiful, and much younger, wife Deki (Deki Yangzom). Soon, Tashi falls in love with Deki and soon they begin a secret affair. Here, the film turns almost noirish.As the monk concludes Tashi's fable, Dondup is left with a dilemma — is the grass truly greener on the other side? This film was the first feature to be made in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan and was shot entirely in the Dzongkha dialect, which is the official language of Bhutan. Because few of the cast spoke this new language, most had to be taught by a dialect coach on-set. The cast does a terrific job and the performances are all excellent...all very natural. The standouts in the film are Tshewang Dendup and Lahakpa Dorji, the two protagonists. Though they go on similar journeys, both exemplify different personalities and both actors successfully establish their characters as human...likable yet flawed. My only complaint is that both their characters don't fully come to a full arc, more so for Dondup's character. Though i'm sure Norbu intended the audience to make their own conclusion to Dondup's journey of discovery. I think maybe Norbu created such great, dynamic characters, I didn't want their stories to end. I wanted to continue riding along on their journeys, curious to see what happens next.The cinematography is stunning and Alan Kozlowski does a wonderful job at contrasting the different looks of Dondup's story and Tashi's cautionary tale. Dondup's world is a natural canvas that showcases the beautiful scenery of the Bhutan landscape. Tashi's world is darker and mystical, shot with dark blues and greens and soft lighting. The final scene at the creek of Tashi's story is absolutely breathtaking. Highly recommended.

Lawrence 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.