The Giornate degli Autori of Venice International Film Festival 2023 presents a film that will be remembered as the last one of master filmmakers, Pema Tseden, who died before time more recently this year. Before completing his last work, Have A Nice Trip. Snow Leopard is yet another fascinating and compelling work that proves the artistic value of the Tibetan filmmaker, who had already been praised in Venice with a nomination for the Golden Lion in 2015 for Tharloand in 2018 with the screening of Baloon in the Horizons section.
The 2015 film was a comedy drama cantered on the figure of a sheep herder who has to face the challenge of modernity as he leaves the mountain to reach the town, where he needs to get an ID photo. The 2018 evoked the struggle of a Tibetan family of sheep farmers trying to comply with the one-child policy imposed by the Chinese authority with contraceptive methods such as condoms, not much in use in the conservative society.
The 2023 film, once again, centers on a family of sheep herders. The relationship between people and animals on which their livelihood depends on, seems to be the main area of poetical interest for the deceased artists, as it keeps recurring as a topos in his cinematography. In fact, he is mostly well known for his depiction of the daily hardship of Tibetan rural families in their simple and concrete life, revolving around the relationship of give and get with nature. The myth of the spiritual Tibet as an enticing cliché for the western society doesn’t concern the author, which focuses on the universal truth that can spring from the little things in daily life. For the local families, it takes so little as the death of few livestock to destroy the hard work of years and to endanger the stability that has been conquered with strenuous work. It is probably from this daily fight and cooperation with the environment that the spiritual vision of Tseden springs from: you don’t always need to chant sutras to be one with what surrounds you. That is his poetic statement, and that is perhaps the main strength of the 2023 film, which is a perfect, albeit obviously tragic, ending of his career.
Just like many of his previous works, the film depicts yet another tension between modernity and tradition. This time, a small documentary film crew reaches the farm where Jinpa and his family live off the exploitation of sheep. The event that needs to be recorded for the regional TV is the entrapment of a snow leopard – now kept as a prisoner in the same sheep pen where he killed as many as nine heads of cattle.
Jinpa requires revenge: either he will be refunded for the loss of his rams, or he won’t release the animal, for which the authorities are already pressing. Over the last 30 years, the illegal activity of poachers and the retaliatory hunting of local herders – who in fact now can’t possess rifles anymore – have killed several examples of this species, which is now deemed endangered.
Again the modern life of people from the city, those who normally live detached from nature, enters a land which is uncontaminated not only from hardcore technology – let alone a video camera – but from the current societal topics: “I don’t even understand this national or global level business”. Trait d’union of this opposition is the figure of the so-called “Snow Leopard Monk”. Brother of Jinpa, the young man is something in between. Just like the director who finds solace to the hectic life of the city in the hypnotic landscape and in the simplicity of life in the mountain village, the monk is able to exploit modernity to the advantage of his inner life. The two don’t necessarily have to be in contradiction. His nickname comes in fact from the fact that he’s known as a photographer of the snow leopard, which according to the legend, “is the spirit of the snow-capped mountain”, and therefore must not be harmed, as old people say. Once again, the tradition finds common ground with the more recent national business that claims what creatures must be protected and what shouldn’t be cared about.
Sometimes this includes humans as well. The world of the leopard protagonist is in fact just as cruel as the world of its abductor. This is just one of the many points in common with mankind, which reaches the epitome with the symbiotic relationship with the monk. In some moments, Pema Tseden decides to emphasize this compelling bond between the two, when through their eye contact, the young Tibetan man can enter the memories of the feline. Tinted with silver color, a fantastic world stems from them – or maybe it’s real; the past, the future, who knows?
The nocturnal style that depicts these irrational moments is alternated to other more traditional directing choices that many times present the man as just one piece of a broader environment. But sometimes the director chooses to linger on a face, on an expression, an emotion, and he gets near.
The film is also a statement about filming itself, as the camera, just like the binocular, can unveil the truths of the animals, but also that of people. It is in a way an ode to the image, as a document in the real sense of the word, images can bring us closer. It is by watching a documentary on the laptop, or by taking hidden photographs, or by zooming directly, that the audience – both the one of the fiction film and the one sitting in Venice – can discover the intimate world of the other. Can the lens be a new means for a tighter community?
The film is a hymn to a sincere life still close to nature, in its brutality, its violence and also in its beauty and kindness. Father and son bring to the starving leopard cub the dead sheep for it to eat, the injured shepard brings to the government people that he’s fighting with, some food and some tea to keep them warm.
No matter which side you’re in, there are some bonds that just go beyond, such is the experience of being alive on earth, which all beings do share. Pema Tseden teaches us that it is possible to try and make it easier for each other, and that life is sacred. Simple, complicated, down to earth and sacred. Just like his film.
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