If your knowledge on Tibet’s struggle against the jackboot of Chinese subjugation consists of celebrity lip service and the odd “Free Tibet” bumper sticker, The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet’s Struggle for Freedom, Ritu Sarlin and Tenzing Sonam’s new documentary on the subject, should serve as an excellent primer. And like any good non-fiction film it throws some welcome curve balls of illumination at viewers.
The film (playing at SIFF Cinema April 16-22) presents a living snapshot of 2008, one of the most tumultuous years of the struggle since China’s takeover of Tibet in 1959. Over the course of its 79-minute running time, The Sun Behind the Clouds chronicles the explosion of protests in Tibet that year, the Beijing Olympics, the Dalai Lama’s attempts to attain Tibetan autonomy via compromise and diplomacy with the Chinese government, and an angry young generation of Tibetans hungry for a more direct and confrontational approach to attaining their country’s freedom.
It’s a complex swirl of events, at whose center lives an important–maybe even unresolvable–debate within Tibet itself. For nearly three decades The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual, religious, and political leader, has pursued The Middle Way, a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. His basic intent: Ceding Tibet’s independence in exchange for his country’s genuine autonomy. But this methodology, built on his Buddhist philosophy of non-violence and compromise, doesn’t sit well with the increasingly restless younger face of Tibet. Journalists, radicals, and monks who’ve spent their entire lives beneath the yoke of Chinese leadership are mad as hell, and they don’t want to take it anymore.
Sarlin and Sonam have been making documentary and feature films about Tibet for over twenty years, and there’s no denying their abiding compassion for the country and its people even as they lay bare a lot of the moral conflicts at the struggle’s center. The love of Tibet for its leader is universal, but their agreement on his Middle Way most definitely is not: At repeated turns, The Dalai Lama’s (necessarily) cloistered existence–surrounded by handlers and bodyguards, frequently forced to hobnob with ineffectual Western leadership in the hope that a trickle of headway can be made in some sort of international support of his efforts–seems detached from the urgent concerns of the Tibetan people. It’s hard to watch this articulate and concerned holy man endure inanities from England’s Prince Charles (a shining beacon of doddering western ineffectuality if ever there was one) just minutes after witnessing Tibetans mourning the massacre of several dozen of their countrymen by the communists. And it’s equally painful to face the possibility that this nearly universally adored holy man’s diplomatic efforts could be exercises in utter futility in their own right.
The Sun Behind the Clouds offers no easy answers to the internal struggles beneath the ostensible no-brainer that is China’s treatment of Tibet, and some wags have dismissed this ambivalent portrayal as shoddy filmmaking (if you’re in the mood to shake your head and mutter “WTF?” just read the New York Times‘ dismissive assessment, as well as some of the didactic responses). But I can’t recall another account of this ongoing tragedy that looks so unflinchingly into Tibet’s own heart.
The Dalai Lama’s solution to the conflict puts Buddhist pacifism at the center, but is it at the cost of Tibet’s heart and identity? Does the relentless homogenization of modern humanity as a whole sound the death knell for this country’s individuality more surely than the crushing wheels of a communist regime? Can even the most profoundly spiritual and intelligent man continue to justify tact and diplomacy in dealing with a government that consistently takes a nightstick to his nation’s kneecaps? The asset that elevates The Sun Behind the Clouds above the sizable laundry list of documentaries on Tibet is its willingness to acknowledge the smeary shades of gray within Tibet’s people–beneath and beyond the black-and-white of China’s brutality.
Great, another propaganda film to shower the Dalai Lama in a halo of wisdom. Sure there are contradictions and shades of gray within the Tibetan exile population, and it’s about time this is recognized. I guess this little bit of intellectual honesty already taxes your mental capacity so much that you won’t bother to confront whether the so-called “China’s brutality” is really black-and-white. Let’s not even bother to throw in Western manipulation and opportunism, oh that’ll just be too hard for you. Let me know when there is an honest film on Tibet. I’m not holding my breath.
I don’t sympathize with the Dalai Lama’s predicament. He’s just too shrewed for his own good. In order to create pan-Tibetan nationalism and maintain political power over various regional factions in exile, he single-handedly leveraged his theocratic position over a religious people to brainwash them into racists against the Han Chinese, often using fabricated propaganda to achieve this end. This may have served morale during the violent CIA-sponsored days, but when the geopoligical tide turned and he suddenly needed a different, peaceful strategy, he finds it exceedingly difficult to corral his lieutenants or convince anybody in China with his about-face. Now the question is, why should China negotiate with him? If he is getting irrelevant among the exiles, and can’t even break the politically unpopular news that Greater Tibet as a single political unit was always an exile fiction, then what can he deliver?
The Chinese were brainwashed too much by watching only CCTV. (Criminal Chinese Television).
They can not see the truth blocked by their strong pride. Wake up all sleeping Chinese. The world is expecting better than you think you can handle.
What’s the use of the millions of eyes, if you can’nt see the truth.
What’s the use of the millions of ears, if you can’nt hear the truth.
The H.H. The Dalai lama with only two eyes, can see all the truth.
And with only two ears can hear the truth.
He is like a Ramboo, fighting for the causes which is dear to all.
China with millions of people, is hated by millions.
Tibet is loved by millions.
Because deep down, everyone loves and respects truth. Even Mr. Nimrod would appreciate.
Who would you like to make a friends with. Tell me trully, by look deeper, without prejudice.
With Hu Jintao, Mao, Hitler and Kim Jong ill or With Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and H.H. the Dalai Lama. Who would you send your kids with. or who would you like your neighbor with be or who would you like to give the keys of Nuclear Weapon among those mentioned.
You know the answere from your heart, but your brain does’nt accept it.
Dear friend, look deeper with relaxed mind, you will get one day. Perhaps when you listen to your heart or when older.
Peace to All.
Helen from Shangri la.
FREE TIBET, FREE TIBET AND FREE TIBET. That’s the only I care. Hu Hu Hu!!!!