Passable - Good Scenery

Rating: 7/10 (31 January 2000)

This biographical movie is about real-life Austrian (and Nazi) mountaineer Heinrich Harrar (Pitt) who is unfortunately scaling peaks in British India when WWII breaks out in 1939. Interred in a British POW camp he and his climbing companion (Thewlis) eventually escape and commence a tortuous travail through India into Tibet and all the way to the forbidden city of Lhasa. There the two men make friends, including the young Dali Lama, and find enlightenment.
The best thing about Seven Years in Tibet is the breathtaking high mountain scenery. How disappointing to learn the movie was shot in the Andes and not the Himalayas. The story is also compelling following Harrar as he morphs from selfish pig to generally nice guy. Unfortunately it's sometimes awkwardly told, and is over-long. And finally the use of English language dialogue as variously English, German, and Tibetan was as off-putting as Pitt's on-again, off-again German accent.
All in all a very ok film, not rip-off from the dollar bin.