Himalaya

I have climbed up a glacier in New Zealand and down a mountain in Switzerland, and it was rough going for a middle-aged film critic. However, truly rough it can be if you're old, live in the Himalayas, and need to spend a couple of weeks taking your yak and salt to get some grain for winter survival.

Photographer Eric Valli's beautiful epic film `Himalaya' is the first Nepalese film to be nominated (in 1999) for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It is also a heroic fable of a small community's struggle to change the guard from old to young and retain the respect of the gods. The simple plot, told in every culture that has any notion of the grandeur of place and power, may deceive some into thinking this a small cliched film. It is rather a grand design of human struggle and triumph, figuratively and realistically represented in the salt caravans that still traverse the majestic Himalayan Mountains in Tibet.

When one of the caravans tries to cut off 4 days by attempting a route reserved for the devils, the ensuing danger as yaks and humans walk the narrow path is so beautiful and harrowing that my glacier experience looks now like a picnic. Blue sky above, blue water below, and a path so dangerous indeed the gods themselves would have second thoughts. Valli's cinemascope is the perfect medium to catch the overpowering mountains and miniscule stones, both instruments of the terrible powers those gods still wield in this other world.

The actors are handsome locals, and the story is right out of Shakespeare and Howard Hawks. See this film before you get too old to breathe its artistic air.