WINDHORSE

Rating: 4

Someone once said that one murder is a tragedy, a million murders is a statistic. That’s the reason Academy Award-winning documentarian Paul Wagner’s first feature film, WINDHORSE, about the plight of the Tibetan people under Chinese occupation is so moving. He looks at the effect of that occupation on one family, and, by extension, the entire culture.

Based on a true story, the Tibetan-langauge film follows that family, which was uprooted from the countryside to Lhasa in post invasion turmoil. There their paths diverged.  Dolkar, becomes an aspiring singer in the Chinese run music industry. Its local media representative wants to use her for propaganda, pressuring her to sing about the joy the Chinese have brought to Tibet. Dolkar’s brother, Dorjee, spends his time playing pool and drinking. He criticizes his sister’s involvement with the Chinese, but takes the money she gives him.

Their cousin, Pema, becomes a Buddhist nun. When not studying scripture, she’s teaching herself English so that she can tell Western tourists about what is happening to her homeland – a dangerous and difficult plan.  Wagner makes that point with an understated scene that underscores the ominous situation. An American tourist approaches Dorjee, trying to strike up a conversation. A Chinese official approaches, but doesn’t come near. He doesn’t need to.  Dorjee and his friends walk away, leaving the tourist wondering what happened. 

When the order comes down that no image of the Dalai Lama can be displayed and, further, that no one is allowed to even think of him, events push the nun to the edge, and she protests in the streets. She’s arrested and tortured, prompting changes in the lives of everyone in her family.

Wagner brings his fine documentarian’s eye for detail to WINDHORSE, a gift for explaining the complexities of the situation. He refrains from a strident condemnation of all things Chinese.  Instead, he aims squarely at the Chinese Government. By having Dolkar’s Chinese boyfriend confide that his family suffered under the Cultural Revolution, Wagner shows that no one is truly safe. 

Filmed on location in Nepal and, surreptitiously in Tibet using non-professional actors, WINDHORSE displays higher production values than many  films shot with less money and more security. It’s the closing credits that really bring home the risks involved for the people who made this film.  Many, including the actress who plays Pema, are listed as “Name Withheld” for fear of official retribution against themselves or against their families still in Tibet.

WINDHORSE begins with a lament that those creatures, the windhorses, no longer carry the prayers of the Tibetan people to heaven. Wagner’s greatest achievement with his film may very well be giving Tibetans another kind of windhorse – a celluloid one – that can take their prayers for the liberation of their homeland not to heaven, but to the entire world. And take them in a way that makes it impossible to turn away.