David Thewlis Filmography Project

Rating: 6/10 (27 September 2019)

#20 Seven Years in Tibet
Peter Aufschnaiter = The Zen Character
Pros: This film tells the life of two Austrian mountaineers who in the middle of World War II are involved in a story that will affect their lives forever. I could write many positive things like saying that the film has a beautiful direction, a good editing, a good story, landscapes and perfect places to show .... but I want to mention something that perhaps many users or critics never got to say when they talked about this film and is that if we analyze very deeply the real message that the film tries to make us see is that we must seek inner peace and Peter is the only one of the two that really gets it and not Heinrich. Peter finds happiness in what he has at his fingertips and his own existence is not complicated by materialistic and banal things that ultimately leave him nothing.
Cons: Instead, Heinrich, who lives depressed by the internal remorse of his past over the years, doesn't really become a good guy at all...he's quite materialistic, he also treats his wife badly and in a way gives us a glimpse that he was a Nazi (mmm I think so). In my opinion, the fact that Heinrich has committed himself more to life in Tibet than Peter doesn't change his way of being or remotely, but unfortunately, this film smells very Hollywood and Brad Pitt represents that commercial side that this film has in some aspects? At the end of the film this one tries to justify his actions by wanting to go back to look for his son, but well, I think it's a serious mistake to make us believe that he's going to change and that in the end he just goes back to Austria to become a ''free spirit''. The friendship that is created between Peter and Heinrich sometimes leaves me with a feeling of coldness, only the two have a mutual affection for the many years that survived all these vicissitudes together. The secondary plot that appears of the Dalai Lama was sometimes monotonous to see in the film, but an objective justifies the means, doesn't it?