The Life of Buddha

Rating:
Summary: Complete and Concise
Review: If you're new to Buddhism or would like to know more, this is probably the best place to start. I've only been following the Buddhist lifestyle for a few years and I found this film to be very helpful. Sometimes the books can be a little dry and some of the names and places are very difficult to pronounce, that's another reason why this is a really great film. So much information is given in the 90 minute video but if you want a Buddhism 101, I highly recommend it. Even if you're not a Buddhist, it's a beautiful story.

Rating:
Summary: makes it seem like a nice but ancient dream
Review: This film is made in the style of a documentary you might see on PBS or the Discovery Channel. The traditional story of the Buddha's life is told in brief appearances by monks, scholars, traditional village storytellers, school children reading aloud from textbooks, etc with the gaps filled in by an unseen narrator. We also see archaeologists walking around some of the important sites and we see panoramas of ruins and weedy overgrown areas where various episodes in the story might or might not have happened.

In my opinion there is a little too much emphasis in the beginning of the film on the fairy tale aspects of the story. Seeing impoverished villagers listening to a grizzled storyteller talking about the infant Siddhartha taking seven steps and proclaiming his purpose immediately after his birth, with lotus flowers springing up in each footstep, may be a bit off-putting to modern Western viewers. The second half of the film sticks to the credible parts of the story, and the DVD bonus material includes some nice
clips of Thich Nhat Hanh explaining (his view of) the core philosophy of Buddhism.

When I ordered this disk there were no reviews or detailed descriptions available here. I was hoping it would be a dramatized Life of Buddha along the lines of all the great classic movies that have been made about Jesus. In my opinion the world needs such a movie about Buddha to vividly illustrate the sacrifices he made and the relevance of
his teachings to all people. So, this is not the sort of movie I was hoping for. It is more like a travel film, a glimpse of far away people and places, with some shots of lovely scenery and exotic birdcalls in the background.