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Travellers & Magicians

2004, Movie, NR, 108 mins

Travellers & Magicians: Review

TRAVELLERS & MAGICIANS
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Offbeat and ravishingly beautiful, this deceptively simple road movie set and shot in Bhutan weaves together the story of a restless man's trek from a remote village to the big city and the cautionary fable related by a traveling companion. Minor government official Dondup (Tshewang Dendup) can't wait to escape tiny Khumbar, a mountain hamlet whose natural beauty in no way compensates for the absence of restaurants, movie theaters and cool girls. When a letter from the friend who's trying to finagle him an American visa arrives, he secures permission to take a short leave in the capital, Thimphu, claiming he wants to attend a religious festival. There's only one bus a day to Thimphu and it's a two-day trip, so Dondup is thoroughly irritated when his chatty neighbors manage to delay him just long enough that he misses it. Unable to hitch a ride, he starts walking, accompanied by a Buddhist monk (Sonam Kinga) and a wizened apple peddler (Ap Dochu), also Thimphu-bound. The trio gradually add two more travelers to their party: a rice-paper maker (Dasho Adab Sangye) from the Khumbar area and his beautiful daughter, Sonam (Sonam Lhamo), who's returning to live with her father rather than go away to school. Whenever they stop to rest or eat, the monk entertains his companions with the story of Tashi (Lhakpa Dorji), who tries to escape his hometown and winds up lost and injured in the mist-shrouded jungle. Given shelter by Agay (Gomchen Penjore), who lives in isolation with his beautiful, unhappy and much younger wife, Deki (Deki Yangzom), Tashi is soon enmeshed in a doomed love triangle that becomes darker with each installment of the tale. Dondup, meanwhile, begins rethinking his desire to flee Bhutan in general and Khumbar in particular as he gets to know the intelligent, gentle and charming Sonam. Writer-director Khyentse Norbu lives a dual life as a filmmaker and as His Eminence Khyentse Dzongsar Rinpoche, a Buddhist lama of some importance. But while Buddhist principles certainly inflect his filmmaking, he's not the least bit preachy or pious; while suggesting vividly that just because the grass looks greener on the Westernized, materialistic side of the fence, it isn't necessarily so, he's also a gifted and extremely entertaining storyteller. The interplay between the peevish Dondup and his fellow travelers is engaging, and the monk's noirish tale of lust, betrayal and murder in the lush jungle is flat-out riveting. (In Dzongkha, with English subtitles.) leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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