And waiting for the film’s obvious and not very dramatic theme to kick in is also not worth the wait. Harrer not only spends seven years in Tibet, it takes him almost that much time to get there, and the journey seems to take forever. That’s OK in theory, this being a movie after all, but “Tibet” is also hampered by an overall sluggishness. The script here is by Becky Johnston, whose last feature was another star vehicle, “Prince of Tides.” It is burdened with lines like “Buttered tea was never my cup of tea” and has a tendency to simplify everything, from Harrer’s domestic situation to the reason China was able to take over Tibet. When publicists say no expense was spared, this is what they mean.Īnnaud (“The Lover”) has always been a director partial to wide-screen exotica, but his best films, “Quest for Fire” and “The Bear,” do without conventional dialogue. Logistics and political problems led director Jean-Jacques Annaud to shoot in the foothills of the Andes, on the Argentina-Chile border, but his passion for authenticity led him to import both yaks from Montana and nearly 100 Tibetan monks from a monastery in India.

Set partly in Tibet just after World War II, when fate cast Harrer in the role of unofficial tutor to the young Dalai Lama, its Robert Fraisse cinematography is strong on the country’s vivid pageantry and colorful costumes.

Though Pitt is as attractive as ever, “Seven Years” offers other things to look at and in fact functions better as a travelogue than as a drama. It may be cold up on the roof of the world, but that doesn’t mean star Brad Pitt isn’t given the opportunity to go bare-chested to appease his determined fans. It’s only a quirk of the credit design that the name appears that way, but it really tells you all you need to know about the two hours and 11 minutes that follow.ĭespite all the media buzz about “Tibet’s” unflattering portrait of the Communist Chinese and the newly revealed Nazi past of the film’s real-life protagonist, mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, what we have here is an old-fashioned star vehicle that has more in common with “Lost Horizon” than with anything remotely political. “Seven Years in Tibet” opens not with a spectacular mountain vista, not with a shot of Lhasa’s fabled golden-roofed Potala but with a single word, impressive in the size of its capital letters: BRAD.

7 years in tibet heinrich harrer