Skip to main content

Lost Horizon

Frank Capra's 1937 film was mutilated in a Second World War re-issue by 24 minutes to exclude the film's pacifist message.

Lovingly restored, offering relevant stills where the film itself remains lost, the original is a fabulous testament to an exemplary film makers art.

It is dated (as is the book) by the assumption that Shangri-La's possibility was only made possible by the entrance of a Western missionary, bearing a Christian ethic, into a hidden valley in Tibet; and, yet, it transcends that colonialist folly by offering an universalist message of hope. The founding Catholic priest, transformed into the High Lama, offers as his essential teaching: 'Be kind' and in doing so could be the present Dalai Lama.

Running through the film too is a realistic assessment of what might happen if a diverse group of people were offered 'paradise' - from willing, recognised acceptance through to slowly melting suspicion towards acceptance through to outright rejection.

The film's end has a gathering at a London club where the aristocratic pursuer of Robert Conway (who has left Shangri-La out of loyalty to his rejectionist brother but now must return) is asked whether he believes in Conway's belief in such a place. He replies, "Yes" for we must all carry a vision of paradise before us. For in believing it so, is our hope in making it so.

It is a sentiment that is, in a cynical age, either preposterous or a timely slap in the face. I tend towards the latter thought.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Buddha meets Christ in embrace

Reading Lama Anagarika Govinda is proving nostalgic on a number of fronts. I recall my first reading of it in my first year at university, bought at Watkins, the famous 'esoteric' bookshop in Cecil Court in London. I sat in my hall of residence room transfixed by a world made familiar; and, it was deepening of a commitment to contemplation (which has been observed fitfully)! I remember returning, at the time, to my school to give a talk to the combined fifth form on Buddhism and using Govinda as the backbone of my delivery (both this book, and his equally wonderful, the Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism). I was voted (I immodestly remember) their best invited speaker of the year. I had even bought a recording of Tibetan music as opener and closer! He reminded me of how important Buddhism was (and is) to my own thinking and comprehension of my experience. The Buddha's First Sermon in the Deer Park was the first religious text I read (of my own volition) at the tender age...
13 comments
Read more

Luminous Spaces - the poetry of Olav H. Hauge

Don't give me the whole truth, don't give me the sea for my thirst, don't give me the sky when I ask for light, but give me a glint, a dewy wisp, a mote as the birds bear water-drops from their bathing and the wind a grain of salt. It began with a poem, this poem, in Mark Oakley's 'The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry' - a wonderful series of meditations on particular poems, one each chapter. The poet is the Norwegian, Olav H. Hague (1908-1994). I immediately ordered, 'Luminous Spaces: Selected Poems & Journals' and was enjoying dipping until, at the weekend, recovering from a stomach bug, I decided to read them through and fell wholeheartedly for a new friend. Hague was born on a farm. His formal education was brought short by a combination of restricted means, an inability to conquer mathematics: and, a voracious diet of reading ranging beyond the confines of any confining curriculum. He went to a horticultural college instead an...
1 comment
Read more

Richard Hauser and the evils of Marx

Richard was a distinguished Austrian sociologist who had contributed to the Wolfenden report that led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England, Wales and Scotland in the late 1960's. I was remembering him on the plane today because I saw a reference to his wife, Hephzibah Menuhin, pianist sister of the violinist Yehudi and human rights activist. I met him after responding to an advertisement in the New Society. He lived in a house in Pimlico, a widower, with a clutch of young people, running an ill-defined (for me) social research/action institute, that I visited several times and to which Richard wanted to recruit me. I was never clear as to what my responsibilities might be and resisted co-option. He was, however, extraordinarily charismatic and as a Jew had fled Austria in 1938 not without receiving permanent damage to his hearing, courtesy of Gestapo interrogation. I vividly remember one story he told me that gives you an idea of his character. He was invit...
17 comments
Read more