The God of Small Films

Bhutan's only highway is three-and-a-half meters wide. Meandering at a rate of 17 curves per kilometer through the valleys and mountains of the tiny Himalayan kingdom, the road may be better acquainted with cattle than automobiles. At dawn and long after dusk, its rutted asphalt rings with the chatter of schoolchildren traveling hours by foot for their daily lessons. By noon, the highway is a playground for rambunctious monkeys, a drying rack for chilies, and—by the grace of an occasional car or truck—an ingenious tool for flattening bamboo. Waters from holy streams course alongside it, and towering stands of prayer flags cover it with a tracery of spiny shadows in the low light of early evening.

On a bright, chilly day in early November, a stretch of this humble road near the tiny hamlet of Chendebji bears witness to an unprecedented event: the shooting of Bhutan's first-ever homegrown feature film. Its writer and director, Khyentse Norbu, bundled against the wind in a thick, maroon turtleneck and pale lavender muffler, pulls his baseball cap low over his eyes and instructs the cameraman to focus on four actors by the side of the road. "Again," he says into a walkie-talkie, and a red tractor emerges from around the bend to collect two of the actors—one dressed as a monk, the other carrying a suitcase and a boom box. Then, just as Khyentse Norbu calls "cut," a van speeds toward the set, forcing the tractor to lurch off the narrow road. The van stops, only inches from the camera, and discharges a monk in a yellow parka. "Career change," mutters Khyentse Norbu in mock fatigue, then strides purposefully toward the van to exchange greetings with the visitor. The monk rushes up to meet him, and bows low. Khyentse Norbu touches him lightly on the head and nods, and the monk drives away contentedly. Seconds later the director has reclaimed his radio and is telling an actor how to wave: "She shouldn't be melancholy. For her, this is just a game."

For most directors, shooting a film is a chance to be treated like a deity. For Khyentse Norbu, better known as Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, the reincarnation of a 19th century Tibetan saint and one of Himalayan Buddhism's most revered lamas, it's just the opposite. "Mostly when I come to Bhutan I'm supposed to play God," explains the youthful 41-year-old, "which has been such a frustration for me for so many years." What he craves, he says, is the chance to "climb down from my throne and speak to ordinary people. I wish I could go with them and talk with them, to a bar, a disco, dancing, whatever. But I still don't have that courage to do it." Here on the set, though, except for the occasional unannounced visits by devotees seeking his blessing, Khyentse Norbu can act almost like an ordinary man. And that, he says, "is so, so good."

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This is not the first time the rinpoche (meaning "precious one," as reincarnate lamas are called) has broadened the scope of what he wryly terms his "usual sort of profession." In 1992, after meeting director Bernardo Bertolucci through friends in London, he served as an adviser on Bertolucci's Little Buddha, parts of which were shot in Bhutan. Then in 1998 he brought a small crew that included several of his longtime Western students to a Tibetan monastery in Bir, India, to shoot The Cup, a film based on the true story of the young resident monks' impious obsession with World Cup football. "Buddhism is their philosophy," read the posters. "Soccer is their religion." The Cup employed not a single professional actor. Most of the characters played themselves, and Khyentse Norbu shot the whole piece without ever fully explaining to the cast members that they were re-enacting their own story. "Everyone knew me at the monastery. Everyone was comfortable with me," he says. "And that made it relatively easy to do what I wanted." He consulted mo, an ancient divination system involving dice and beads, to make decisions about casting and shooting schedules and was careful to assure his lay Tibetan actors that they wouldn't suffer karmic retribution if the script called for them to rough up a monk for making too much noise during France vs. Brazil. The Cup picked up awards at the Pusan, Munich and Toronto film festivals and, according to the New York Times, established Khyentse Norbu as "a born filmmaker."

But shooting in Bhutan is more complicated. Despite its breathtakingly cinematic scenery, the long-isolated kingdom couldn't be less suited to the mechanics of moviemaking. Cameras must be lugged up treacherous footpaths, electricity is scarce, and film must be flown out on one of the country's only two planes for processing in Bangkok. Television came to Bhutan in 1999. And, says Khyentse Norbu, those Bhutanese who know what movies are regard them as purveyances of violence and sex—hardly an appropriate hobby for a reincarnate saint. Gaining permission to bring the 16 foreigners in his crew of 108 to Bhutan, Khyentse Norbu knew, wouldn't be simple. The $1.8 million budget for his film, tentatively entitled Travelers and Magicians, wasn't sufficient to pay the $200 daily tariffs Bhutan imposes on tourists. But Khyentse Norbu proved a persuasive negotiator. In a country where 20% of the population are monks or nuns, karma is taken seriously and no one likes to refuse a request made by a rinpoche of Khyentse Norbu's rank. His American and Australian production unit received permission to enter the country for free, and shooting proceeded from September until late November.

But if Khyentse Norbu's status as a beloved spiritual leader opens doors, it is also a potential obstacle. When he began selecting the all-Bhutanese cast last summer, several of those chosen to audition were so awed to be in his presence that they became speechless. Khyentse Norbu worried that his script, which includes several fairly racy romantic bits, might be impossible to execute if he were the one in the director's chair. But these worries were mostly unfounded. The cast he ultimately assembled includes a folklore scholar who plays a monk, a monk trained in pure mathematics who plays a tractor driver, an official from Bhutan's Royal Monetary Authority who is also a former member of the national football team, a lieutenant colonel in the King's bodyguard and a charismatic TV reporter with a journalism degree from the University of California, Berkeley. They're a devout but cosmopolitan bunch, and they've taken their director's special standing in stride. After two months of shooting, they treat him with casual affection and a deference that seems to owe as much to his incisive wit and encyclopedic knowledge of film as to his exalted position or Buddhist training.

Khyentse Norbu's script, like the process of shooting it, confronts questions of what it means for Bhutan to modernize. The movie opens with a traditional archery tournament in which Dondup, a self-absorbed young village official who wears white high-top sneakers and an I LOVE NEW YORK T shirt under his traditional Bhutanese dress, scoffs at the simplicity of his hamlet and dreams of quitting Bhutan for America where he has heard he can get rich from picking grapes. When he receives a letter offering him a chance to leave Bhutan if he can make it to the capital, Thimpu, within two days, he lies to his boss, packs his bags and walks to the highway—arriving just too late to catch the only bus for days. Forced to hitchhike, he is joined by various travelers who grant him fresh glimpses of the beautiful land he is determined to leave. Among those he meets is an irritatingly perceptive monk ("The truth," says Khyentse Norbu, "should always be a little irritating") who tells him a traditional Buddhist fable about a sorcerer drawn into a deadly love affair with a married woman. Woven together, the stories of Dondup and the sorcerer constitute a gently mocking and distinctly Buddhist lesson on the perils of human desire. The film's alternative title, says Khyentse Norbu, is The Bitter and the Sweet of Temporary Things.

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