t_maly The movie really seemed promising - an average Joe in a Bhutanese village falls under the spell of America and opportunity and sets off on a journey toward a different life. Along the way, he meets a monk who lectures him on 'the grass isn't always greener on the other side' and a farmer and his young daughter who may give him reason to stay.The idea seemed promising. The main character, I found really annoying. So incredibly foolish, truly believing the hype of America. I suppose there's something to say about how the things we are captivated by are very often things we are the most ignorant of.But at the same time, I didn't find the small village life appealing, either. Perhaps I'm outgrowing my Buddhist interests and am starting to not quite agree with Buddhist philosophy, not anymore. I'll spare the rant. I don't necessarily disagree (I do think the main character was really stupid), just that there's more to living in this world than thinking so black and white. You can't summarize happiness into a philosophical debate. But oh well.Story wise, I enjoyed the sub-story of the student wandering into the woods to find a beautiful woman and her overprotective old husband, but felt that it took up too much time from the main story that it somewhat took away that story's strength. The movie ended way before I felt it should have. The conflict was just barely starting to develop, when the movie ended. Good stories require a protagonist who is met with a dilemma, and handles it in either a foolish or a wise way. Perhaps this protagonist handled it in a foolish way, but I was hoping for some sort of transformation, that the guy was more than just some fool ready to believe American media propaganda. However, I felt that the conflict did not reach a climax to really portray his bad decision. It almost felt like the story ended before he was even really truly contemplating the dilemma.Honestly, I would have left too, despite the girl. I don't think going to America would solve all the protagonists problems. I don't think there is one single panacea to our unhappiness. However, I do think that living a stale, isolated, dull life can very much be a large part of our unhappiness. My perspective is that when things don't change in our lives, we lose our passion, our joy. We depend too much on others for everything, and no matter what that means, we'll be unhappy at some point, never truly satisfied. My perspective is that true happiness is a life of curiosity, adventure, experimentation, travel, learning, creativity, sharing within community, and mastery of survival and living. There's no one thing or place that can make us happy. And that means not even where we are, this supposed place that is 'good enough' because it's handed to us. Even in the simplest and least industrialized of societies, there still are rigid social structures and lifestyles that tear away at our freedom. Happiness comes in being capable of handling life's challenges, and being given many challenges. Variety and diversity, met with gusto. And maybe loving each other along the way. Too much tradition, superstition, culture - that can easily get in our way of being truly free. I don't think that we as individuals were ever meant/designed to do just one thing with our time. Perhaps division of labor is more the root of our unhappiness than 'craving' or 'desire'. Perhaps when we divide our tasks and specialize in doing one or two things, we leave ourselves dependent upon others for the entirety of our survival - and in the process, find ourselves at their mercy, helpless, powerless. We never truly see the power within ourselves, what we are truly capable of, how well we can thrive in life if we have some intelligence and creativity.

Brandt Sponseller Dondup (Tsewang Dandup) is a Bhutanese government officer who has just been assigned to a small village. He's anxiously awaiting a letter from a friend in America. As soon as he receives it, he plans to meet his friend in Bhutan's capital, Timphu, and from there make his way to America, which he imagines of a land of great beauty and great opportunity, with "cool", beautiful women and an exciting lifestyle.Extending from the premise, Travellers and Magicians becomes a combination of a road film and a grass-is-greener film. Dondup receives his letter, but partially due to cultural formalities and niceties, he misses the bus he needed to catch to make it to Timphu--a 2-day journey--on time. Increasingly agitated, he meets up with a humble apple-seller and a Buddhist monk on the road, and eventually two more people join the group. While they travel, the monk very gradually tells them a parallel story meant to serve as a parable, which we see enacted.The structure and subgenres of the film provide a nice framework for two major, intertwined themes, both of them very Buddhist in nature. The subtler theme, most rooted in it being a road movie, is that of living in the moment, which is one aspect of mindfulness. The journey, here shown in a literal way, but also meant figuratively, is just as important as arriving at a destination. The more explicit theme, rooted in the grass-is-greener aspect, is a warning against the attachment to hopes, desires and dreams. Attachment is different than merely having hopes, desires and dreams. Attachment is a state where one stops being mindful of the here and now.Dondup keeps dreaming about America. In his mind, he's already there, and his appearance and behavior evidence this. He talks of how beautiful it must be, yet Bhutan, which is on the edge of South-Central China, in the Himalayas, not too far from Mount Everest and Nepal, isn't short on beauty. Exquisite cinematography keeps us aware of this, and stresses how Dondup cannot see what is right in front of his face. He also dreams of the job he might hold in America--perhaps he'll be an apple-picker or dishwasher, he muses. But he has a relatively well-paid and certainly well-respected position in his culture. He dreams of the women in America, yet he runs into a very beautiful and elegant woman on his journey who is young, single and very attracted to him. The grass-is-greener theme even rears its head by Dondup trying to block out live music that's right in front of him (thanks to the Monk with a dramnyen, which is a bit like a guitar) by playing western music on a boom box.At the same time, the parallel story told by the monk features a young man with similar dreams who inadvertently escapes to an unknown area where he too meets a beautiful woman who is attracted to him. The woman's husband has also achieved "the other side of the fence" in his grass-is-greener dream, but with the arrival of the young man, it backfires on him. Achieving the greener grass also ends up backfiring on the young man in a way, and he seeks a return home.It's important to remember that in Buddhism, these ideas are not presented in moralizing way, and they're not presented as something black and white. Hopes, desires and dreams are not considered bad things (and neither is attachment--the problems with such things are more matter-of-factly presented), and certainly, the grass could be greener somewhere else. Because of this, Travellers and Magicians writer/director Khyentse Norbu maintains appropriate degrees of ambiguity throughout the film. While doing so, he presents a story with important themes that is captivatingly told with beautiful cinematography and excellent performances. Don't miss this one.

Lawrence In this, his second film, Khyentse Norbu shows how skilled a filmmaker he really is. An ordained lama, he studied independent film-making in New York and here it really pays off. While his first film, The Cup, was a well done portrait of life in Bhutan, Travellers and Magicians is that and much more. Taking his cue from, among other works, the great Ju Dou by Zhang Yimou, Norbu gives us a village official who longs for the excitement and money to be had in America.Sporting shiny white new athletic shoes, the official makes his way to the main road where he tries to catch a bus to Thimbu, first stop on his journey. But he misses the bus and soon meets up with an interesting assortment of fellow travelers--an old apple seller, a monk, and a farmer with his beautiful daughter. While waiting for the bus--or anyone driving who can give any or all of them a ride--they're entertained by the monk who tells a tale of a young apprentice magician who loses his way in a large forest and comes upon an old man and his much younger wife.Norbu intercuts the ongoing tale with different legs of the travelers' journey on the seemingly endless road. The editing chops on display here are truly impressive, marking this as the work of a director who really knows how to make a film grab the viewer. We see the young magician lying in bed at night, thinking only of the young wife, and dissolve to the official waking up in the morning, having no doubt thought of the farmer's daughter much of the night.This is much more than great editing; it gives us strong links between how we live our lives and how we imagine our lives should be lived. The tales we tell, the ones we remember, are those that inform how we feel we should or could do what we're not doing now. It's our memory of another story--what we read long ago, or what someone told us long ago--that gives us the unofficial subconscious laws we live by. That's what Norbu tells us in this great film.A giant leap forward from The Cup, Travellers and Magicians is a first class cinematic work that should be seen by many.Highly recommended.

Barbara Gershenson Love versus Lust... All of the actors were chosen from local Bhutanese people. The inner stories are the most fascinating. An inspiration to all. To young people hoping and dreaming for the material world's "gifts". To Westerners who have never imagined or seen the beauty and rich culture of Bhutan. Just be patient, for this movie will lead you on a journey which you could never imagine..... I learned new perspectives about Hope and Love. The stories don't follow the Hollywood model of the acts. But, for me this storytelling method is more like that of the fable, fairytale or morality tale like Eric Roehmer's Morality Tales. For me, this is a much more enriching art form. It's not your typical Hollywood movie, thanks.