Seven Years in Tibet

Jean-Jacques Annaud meant to shoot in Ladakh until Chinese pressure on India moved the production; his own site lists the locations as Argentina, Canada, Austria and the Himalayas. In 1999 he revealed that two crews had filmed in Tibet in secret, and that roughly 20 minutes of it sits in the finished picture. Stern reported Heinrich Harrer’s past in the SS in June 1997, after shooting had ended and months before release, catching the company unprepared. In the film a journalist calls him a National Socialist Party member, and late on he says he shudders to recall having held those beliefs. Harrer met Simon Wiesenthal in Vienna and issued a statement condemning Nazi era crimes. China barred Sony’s films and kept Annaud and Brad Pitt out; the ban later eased. John Williams’s score, with Yo-Yo Ma on cello, took a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Score, which went to Titanic. The film appears in no category at the 70th Academy Awards, while Kundun, the other Tibet film of 1997, drew nominations including cinematography and original dramatic score. A good fit if you will sit through the climbing and the prison camp before Lhasa arrives. Not for anyone wanting a film that lets Tibet speak for itself, since the narrator is the Austrian climber throughout.