"In Tibetan Buddhism, we believe that everybody is reborn again and again," says Lama Norbu (Ruocheng Ying) while introducing himself to the father of a young boy Jesse Conrad (Alex Wiesendanger), candidate to the position of the next spiritual leader for the followers of Buddhism in Tibet. Reincarnation is one of the main beliefs for the followers of Tibetan Buddhism depicted and described in the movie along with other concepts, such as impermanence, enlightenment, and Dharma. Besides translating quite an informative story about the history and main principles of Buddhism, Little Buddha provides not so much an innovative, but a peculiar stance to the conversation on the role of religion in the modern world.
To summarize the film, Little Buddha (1993) is a drama that follows a Tibetan Buddhist teacher Lama Norbu (Ruocheng Ying) in his journey to find the human manifestation of a dead Buddhist spiritual leader, Lama Dorjee. One of the three main candidates to this position, young American boy Jesse Conrad (Alex Wiesendanger), along with his parents (Chris Isaak and Bridget Fonda), learns about the life of Buddha and his teachings upon meeting with Lama Norbu and other candidates in an overseas trip to Bhutan that would decide his fate.
One of the strengths of Little Buddha is its effective instructional content on the key principles and history of Tibetan Buddhism. This is achieved through a skillful use of setting that is relatable and understandable to the mainly Western audience. Throughout the film, basic principles and historical roots of Buddhism are being discussed by Lama Norbu and by the protagonist of the book gifted to Jesse. Main characters, Jesse and his parents, are American citizens, and half of the movie's scenes are set in the highly metropolitan city of the contemporary United States, Seattle. The relatability of the film's American characters to the Western audience, in contrast to the characters from foreign places or far-away cultures, make the learning experiences that the American characters go through in the movie relatable. For example, the viewers, presumably unfamiliar with Buddhism, learn about meditation, reincarnation, and permanence along with Jesse, who is non-hesitant to ask questions about these concepts, and his parents observing Buddhist rituals and practices from the outsider perspective. In this way, content, such as the religion of Buddhism and the story about its origins, which is otherwise largely foreign to the audiences from the West, becomes familiar through understandable settings and characters.
The director, Bernardo Bertolucci, and the writers of this 1993 production engage in the contemporary debates on the role of religion by providing a view about the reviving relevance and importance of religion in today's world. Parallels are drawn between story lines from the fictional ancient and modern worlds. For examples, Bertolucci makes an obvious visual and contextual connection between young Buddha's, or Prince Siddharta's (Keanu Reeves), encounter with the "pains and sufferings" of commoners outside of his kingdom (45min) and Jesse's encounter with the poorer working class neighborhoods of Bhutan (1h24min). In both of the scenes, people doing physical work, such as pottery, poor and filthy conditions of the street life are portrayed. In contrast to these unpleasant sceneries, similar connection between two characters can be found in their quite perfect experiences full of carelessness and joy before the above-mentioned encounters: Siddhartha lived through these experiences in three large prosperous palaces with gardens and fountains all to himself, Jesse - in a beautiful modernistic house and school playground on sunny afternoons. These parallels seem to point to the fact that understanding of the world through the prism of religion, such as the belief in an individual's path to Buddha in Buddhism, can extend to any time and context outside of its geographical and timely origins.
Moreover, characters of both of their quite irreligious fathers overlap in one important moment - motive to protect their sons from the painful realities of the outside world. Siddhartha's father, the King Suddhodhana (Rudraprasad Sengupta), instructs his subordinates to indulge Siddhartha in happiness and keep his son away from any worries and from seeing the life outside his palaces (34min). In the same way, Dean Conrad, Jesse's father, is initially agitated and suspicious about the Buddhists' considerable interest in his son and even refuses to continue arranging their meetings with him (38min; 54min). Desire to protect their sons from the overwhelming influences of the world outside their painless homes is what connects the characters from two different story lines separated by several thousands of years. However, it did not stop the sons from following their spiritual aspirations. Thus, by making religious and, in this instance, pre- and ir- religious reflections and experiences around religion present in the same way in two different timely contexts conveys the message of the universal applicability of religion and its high relevance to today's context.
Regarding main principles and origins of Buddhism, Little Buddha is indeed an informative story with its successful choice of relatable setting and character design. However, the main message of the film is on a separate, but related topic: the role of religion in the modern world. Despite the view about the end of religion that was popular in the 20th century, the 1993 film manages to effectively convey its main message on the reviving or continuing importance and relatability of religion in the modern world.
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