Review of Manakamana (2013) by Reini U — 01 Aug 2014

Cheap and minimalistic exotism exploitation, which would have been caused immediate film-school ejection in a better european university. But this is Harvard, and there Ulrich Seidl is probably a hero. But the filmmakers probably didn't think about the audience reception over here. They live there, know all the persons, just made a funny little film about normal people in the Nepal mountains visiting the Manakanama temple in a cable car. They probably thought about doing a "modern times" analogy. Technology made everything simplier, and maybe will some conservatives will think this is bad. Before the cable car you needed a 3 days hike up to the temple, now it's 8 minutes. And the next idea would be to bring the Mt. Everest people with a cable car to the base camp. But this line of thinking is too cheap and misses the point. The point is the inherent westerners view on these people. You laugh about them, but rarely with them. They cannot eat their ice cream properly, so you laugh.

Nepali watching this film don't get it. What's the point? Yes, there is none.