You wait your whole life for a film on Tibet, and then bang, two come along in the same year. Just what have we done to deserve it?<br /><br />Unfortunately this is at the same mediocre level of Brad Pitt's offering. It's slow and laboured pace does it no favours at all and we are asked, like children, to stare in spiritual wonderment at things that are not worth the time or the effort. Martin Scorsese finds himself well and truly outside of his usual territory here and instead of the stunning personal storytelling we're used to from him, we are bogged down with all sorts of ridiculous mumbo-jumbo and a somewhat confined take on the history of China and Tibet. I can't imagine he enjoyed this experience much.<br /><br />Not to say the direction and cinematography isn't great, Scorsese is a born filmmaker and knows what to do with a camera, just that the choice of project does him no justice whatsoever.<br /><br />The first of the 17 Scorsese films I've seen that I'll be avoiding like the plague from now on.