By Jeannette Catsoulis
When filmmaker Rick Ray arrived in India to direct a travel video, an interview with the Dalai Lama was supposed to be part of his compensation. When he discovered that he would have to arrange it himself, he did, by e-mail.
The result is “10 Questions for the Dalai Lama,” a tedious title for an anything-but-tedious film. Expertly merging the mystical and mundane, Ray presents a warm and well-rounded portrait of his subject, his Buddhist philosophies and the painful circumstances of his exile to a modest monastery in Dharamsala, India.
Though it touches on Tibet and China’s discordant political history (with amazing archival film and an interview with a former Chinese political prisoner), the movie is more charmed by the Dalai Lama’s personality than by his politics.
Impish, self-deprecating and an infectious giggler, he is an unorthodox spiritual exemplar with an insatiable scientific curiosity. (“When science contradicts faith, he’s prone to choose science,” Ray marvels.) This 14th incarnation of the Dalai Lama would rather be reading about neuroscience than enduring a festival in his honor.
As for Ray’s questions, his interviewee doesn’t hold back, whether discussing his environmentalism or the outmoded Indian caste system. He even ventures onto the thin ice of birth control.
“Quality is more important than quantity!” is his emphatic opinion. Mother Teresa might have had something to say about that.
The New York Times does not assign star ratings to movie reviews.
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“10 Questions for the Dalai Lama”
NOT RATED | 1 hour, 27 minutes | DOCUMENTARY | Written, directed, narrated, edited and photographed by Rick Ray
