Sunday, April 23, 2006

The Giant Buddha's was about the destruction of the two famous Buddha statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan in March 2001.

The film is indeed multi-layered, which is a relieved as I had been watching docus with not enough points of views and angles. There is the family who stayed in the caves where the Buddha's are, talking about how their forefathers would take care and pay respect to the statues; there is the star reporter from Al Jazeera, who risked his life to get footage of the destruction; There is the journey and lively descriptions of the Buddha's, and the inhabitants who lived around them to revere them, from Xuan Zang; there is the French archaeologist who was convinced that there is a giant sleeping Buddha hiding underneath the ground, near the wreck, and leads an expedition to try to find this 8th Wonder; There is a Canadian-Afghan writer who reflects on her father who was there posing before the giant Buddha's, and was visibly moved to tears when she finally made the arduous journey to Bamiyan; and finally, the not-so-nice one about the attempted replica of the giant Buddha's, but all in the name of tourism and profit. Makes me feel ashamed to be a Chinese ...

From the ignorance of the Talibans, who destroyed statues in the name of religious cleansing, the docu followed all these other paths and links, to find different responses to the destruction, and hopefully come up with positive tales of redemption and conciliation. It is really a tight slap to the world that such a historic wonder was allowed to be destroyed without any attempts to prevent it. Indeed, one of the most sombre lines in the docu was by Iranian filmmaker, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who said:" I reached the conclusion that the statue of Buddha was not demolished by anyone. It crumbled out of shame. Out of shame for the world's ignorance towards Afghanistan."

A very moving docu, pity the house was not full. I guess if only it was screened at 7pm instead ... Hope it gets a commercial release.

♥ 11:23 pm