Review of Little Buddha (1993) by Maria N — 09 Dec 2015

The movie Little Buddha follows the journey of Lama Norbu, a lama at the Taro monastery in Bhutan through his journey of finding the reincarnation of his teacher, Lama Dorje, who passed away 9 years ago in the city of Seattle. After years and years of searching, Lama Norbu arrived at the Konrad household and informed Lisa Konrad, that Jesse, her 7 years old son, may be the reincarnation of Lama Dorje. At first, Jesse's parents were although interested by the idea and respectful especially Dean who sees about Lama Dorje's religion, they were quite doubtful, but after the death of Dean's close friend, Evan, everything changed, their way of seeing things changed and of course their view on Buddhism changed as well. Believing that reincarnation is actually possible gave them a sense of hope and helped them recover from their loss. There was another storyline about the story with a retelling of the life of Prince Siddhartha, who grew up to become the Buddha.

Based on the Buddhist faith, little Buddha is a blend of the Eastern and Western culture. It contrasts the difference in the lifestyle and belief of the East and West. Yet it also brings the 2 sides of the world together in some way. Bertolucci brought color to Buddhism, which can often be a bland topic to make a movie about by telling it in a modern society while hatching the origin, traditions and the 'informational' parts of Buddhism in the film. By doing so, Bertolucci brought the viewers a good amount of information while not losing their attention like many other movies on this topic does.

Little Buddha has elements of liberation within it, transforming and relating Buddhism to each and every one of us and our modern world without losing the essense of Buddhism and introducing the audience to the fundamental core for example the idea of reincarnation and the origin of Buddhism.

However, some parts of the film did seem a little superficial at times, some parts of the film simply was not very articulate. For example they way they located the Konrad family. In the movie, Lama Norbu's student dreamed that Lama Dorje led him to the Konrad house, which is somewhat of an absurd reason to believe that Jesse is the reincarnation of Lama Dorje.

Over all, I liked the movie, despite the fact that I found some parts a little bizarre, I would give it a 8 out of 10. It opened up a new horizon for me in terms of my knowledge and thinking on Buddhism, so if you would like to learn more about Buddhism but would also like it to relate to our modern life, the movie 'little Buddha' is a great choice.