Title: My Reincarnation

Opens: October 28, 2011

For a guy who is angry that the Chinese government took over Tibet in 1959, causing him to flee to Italy, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu seems awfully fond of giving Chinese fortune-cookie advice. A teacher, excuse me, A Master, whose classes bring out scores of Westerners who are looking for a Buddhist alternative to Christianity and Judaism, Norbu—at least from what we can see from Jennifer Fox’s “twenty-years-in-the-making” documentary–provides little insight to this tubby fellow’s popularity. His son, Yeshi Silvano Namkhai—who kvetches that The Master acts toward him like a teacher rather than a dad—rebels against his father’s insistence that he maintain his Tibetan culture. Namkhai, who should see a dermatologist, is thought by some hippie-ish folks to be the reincarnation of his uncle, another “great” spiritual master, which means that perhaps in Buddhism, unlike Hinduism, one can progress from one dead human being to another uncharismatic human being without first becoming a cow or an iguana of what-have-you.

New York based Jennifer Fox, a documentarian whose “Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman” “mirrors the way women communicate today” and whose “An American Love Story” tracks a year-and-a-half of an interracial marriage particularly with insights of their biracial daughter, shows the crowds in awe of this father-son act. But who would not be in awe of the older man who advises a scared young fellow in the audience who wants a mantra to deal with his HIV-positive diagnosis to “see a doctor” and then to “relax.” As if that’s not awesome advice, check out his son’s counsel to a man who finds his job stressful. “All jobs have stress. Be like a child.” To add to audience stress, the young man ends a large number of his advice-giving sentences with “know” just a tad better than the American practice of saying the most insipid phrase in the English language, “you know.” Or does he mean “no?” That would be more logical.

There’s a mix of psychology and philosophy in the teachings, which is not unusual since some experts believe that people with neurotic concerns or healthy worries would do best to consult Aristotle and not Freud. We are privy to meetings in which the congregation says “OM,” to a scene in the hospital where the older master is fighting cancer, and not nearly enough footage of scenes from the Tibet that the Master had fled when the Chinese took over and killed some of the locals. Too bad Ms. Fox did not try to uncover for naïve members of the movie audience just what benefits one gets from mantras, nor did she try to explain just what excites the Westerners, causing them to display broad smiles, when the Dalai Lama comes into view. I guess we’ll have to ask Richard Gere.

Unrated. 82 minutes. (c) 2011 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Overall – C