BUDDHISTS ARE CUTE, like puppies, representing purity and innocence in the Hollywood tradition of Shangri-La. So they might as well profit from their own image, in which light Bhutan’s The Cup—the tiny nation’s first feature film—is shrewdly positioned for both the Oscars and the multiplexes.
THE CUP
directed by Khyentse Norbu
opens February 18 at Broadway Market
The film’s director, Khyentse Norbu, is an actual Tibetan Buddhist lama, but he knows better than to bore us with the intricacies of philosophy or ascetic rigors of a foreign culture. Instead he gives us two subjects of universal appeal: mischievous youths and soccer. The youths in question are acolyte monks led by the waggish Orgyen (Jamyang Lodro), who plasters his wall with photos of European football stars. “This is my shrine,” he says, putting him at odds with the dour Geko (Orgyen Tobgyal), a sort of consigliere to the monastery’s kindly abbot (another lama, and a nonprofessional actor like everyone else in the cast). Orgyen is put in charge of two yokels just arrived from Tibet, quickly corrupting them with his love of televised sports.
From there, the plot simply concerns Orgyen’s efforts to raise 350 rupees to rent a satellite dish for the ’98 Brazil-France World Cup final. What holds your interest, however, is Norbu’s methodical attention to the details and rituals of the monks’ life. His film is a comedy, but at the farthest possible remove from our rapid-fire sitcoms. The Cup is slow—dare one say meditative?—like the monastery itself. We watch tsampa being prepared and kneaded in real time. A swarm of young monks plays soccer with a soda can as a make-do ball; later they pile aboard a tractor, robes and all, like so many red butterflies. Meanwhile, the older monks make constant reference to their enforced exile from Tibet.
To be sure, The Cup is benefiting from its underdog marketing and Tibet’s fashionable victim status. It’s another one of those feel-good, art-house movies full of sentiment that we might not accept in our own language and culture. But it’s also a small, simple gem of a film, understated where it might be cloying, and ultimately moral.
