Himalaya

This movie captured me from moment one. The roughness of the mountains and the raw beauty of nature combined with human endurance and frailty is woven into an stunning epic of love, courage and man's recognition of the unknown and contradictions of nature.

A definite MUST!

I'm glad I've seen this one at the movie theater! Such a beautiful piece of photography will, of course, look great on the TV, too. And the story is by no means secondary: a warm tale of human endurance, indeed. But watching those images of Nepal on the big screen was just something I thank heavens I was able to do! Delightful!

I have climbed up a glacier in New Zealand and down a mountain in Switzerland, and it was rough going for a middle-aged film critic. However, truly rough it can be if you're old, live in the Himalayas, and need to spend a couple of weeks taking your yak and salt to get some grain for winter survival.

Photographer Eric Valli's beautiful epic film `Himalaya' is the first Nepalese film to be nominated (in 1999) for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It is also a heroic fable of a small community's struggle to change the guard from old to young and retain the respect of the gods. The simple plot, told in every culture that has any notion of the grandeur of place and power, may deceive some into thinking this a small cliched film. It is rather a grand design of human struggle and triumph, figuratively and realistically represented in the salt caravans that still traverse the majestic Himalayan Mountains in Tibet.

When one of the caravans tries to cut off 4 days by attempting a route reserved for the devils, the ensuing danger as yaks and humans walk the narrow path is so beautiful and harrowing that my glacier experience looks now like a picnic. Blue sky above, blue water below, and a path so dangerous indeed the gods themselves would have second thoughts. Valli's cinemascope is the perfect medium to catch the overpowering mountains and miniscule stones, both instruments of the terrible powers those gods still wield in this other world.

The actors are handsome locals, and the story is right out of Shakespeare and Howard Hawks. See this film before you get too old to breathe its artistic air.

This film is simply beautiful to watch. The cinematography is absolutely stunning, the music and directorial mood is captivating. The film is light on plot and the little bit of intrigue sort of fades away, but that really doesn't matter.

I have been to the Himalayas (Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan) and it is really hard to capture the exquisite beauty of the place and the grace of the Buddhist people who dwell there. This film captures that beauty and grace.

If you have any interest in that part of the world and its people, this film will hold your attention and inspire your imagination. How? I don't know, perhaps some of that Himalayan magic rubbed off on the film crew.

US or European movies about non-US, non-European people are usually faulty, even when they mean well : often, they need to use some bland occidental character (think Brad Pitt in "7 years in Tibet"), or the non-occidental people are actually occidental people with make-up and funny accents, or everybody speaks English but the bad guys, or everybody behaves like a bunch of Californian housewives or New York traders. So I was a little apprehensive about "Himalaya". Fortunately, French director Eric Valli knows the Himalayan (Dolpo) people he's filming, he has been living with them for years and speaks their language. So what we got here is a true movie, with true cinematic characters, a true plot and no condescending stuff. It's actually amazing to behold a story where the people have problems so remote from the ones someone from Paris, France can have (like having to set up a 2-weeks cattle drive across Himalaya to trade salt against barley), and however these problems and emotions are made more real than, say, a comedy about bourgeoisie with sex trouble. Not that the plot is truly original : it deals, in a rather classic way and not unlike some war movies, with the essence of leadership (the original French title is "Himalaya, the youth of a chief"). What makes a leader, and how and why can leadership be challenged ? Why people do follow some leaders and not other ? From what we see in the film, these are questions that people who live in such extreme conditions find of extreme importance. Add a magnificent scenery (no need for filters for clear blue lakes there) and talented actors who literally inhabit their complex roles (partly because they've been in situations like this or know people who have), and here is one impressive adventure movie.