A vibrant tale of a caustic climber's change

Rating: 7/10 (4 March 2000)

Heinrich Harrer is not a nice man. Driven, you might say, but overall not the most gregarious of individuals. His single-minded mission: scale a particularly difficult Alps peak in Austria. Of course, when he does so he abandons his girlfriend and their unborn child, but hey - you have to have goals in life, right? But this isn't a simple tale of a man finding himself on the mountain. You see, poor Heinrich's dream of scaling the peak isn't realized. World War II breaks out and he's taken off the mountain by Allied forces and imprisoned. He breaks out and attempts to visit Tibet, completely closed off to foreigners. Starving and cold, he eventually gains admittance, and through luck somehow becomes friends with the young Dalai Lama. It's the relationship between the two of them that changes Heinrich from a bitter, selfish, and self-absorbed young man into a diligent, thoughtful and courageous adult. At the Dalai Lama's bidding, Heinrich introduces movies to the Tibetans, and he teaches the young spiritual leader all he can about the Western world.
Perhaps the most appealing thing about this true-to-life story is the casting of Brad Pitt as Heinrich. The man with the six-pack abs is not usually the first choice when it comes to the pensive roles, but Pitt pulls off the feat with style and a real sense of class. What's more, his character's transformation is gradual and perfectly plausible; it's not one of those one-minute-he's-a-jerk, the-next-minute-he's-a-saint transformations. This isn't easy for an actor to do, especially one with Pitt's maligned reputation. Mix in delightful cinematography with sumptuous scenes of Tibet itself, and you got yourself a fine movie. Don't think of it as overburdened drama, think of it as a spiritual odyssey. The true purpose and nature of this odyssey, however, remains unknown to our protagonist until he visits the ancient city of Tibet.