Captivating photography can't hide a misguided movie.

Rating: Null/10 (26 July 2014)

'Seven Years in Tibet' tells a story that is truly captivating but focuses it's energy on a character that isn't. We know about Heinrich Harrar, the cold and indifferent Austrian mountain climber who left his pregnant wife to go and climb Nanga Parbat, an extremely difficult peak in the Himalayas. The first hour of the movie deals with his trek with his guide Peter Aufschnaiter (David Thewlis). These scenes are pretty much predictable and the question of why this mountain was so important to Harrar goes unanswered.
World War II breaks out and Harrar (Brad Pitt) stumbles into the city of Lhasa, where resides the 14th Dalai Lama.
The scenes in this city are captivating. The Dalai Lama is seen as a smiling wide-eyed kid interested in Western culture. He likes this stranger from the west and asks him to build a movie theater. Harrar obliges. We also understand that the Dalai Lama is under threat by China who want this tiny remote land for reasons he can't quite understand.
This is an interesting story. So why does the movie spend so much time focusing on the less interesting Harrar? When the movie takes us to Lhasa I was so captivated by it's world that I was hoping that the movie would fill me in on questions about why the Dalai Lama had to go into exile. It is all for naught. Maybe the film should have focused more on the relationship between Harrar and the Dalai Lama and done away with the scenes of his mountain climbing. Those scenes don't establish anything or answer the question of why Nanga Parbat was so important with a war brewing so close to home. 'Seven Years in Tibet' is a misguided effort that has it's focus in the wrong place.