TIFF Report: The Giant Buddhas Review

'Yet Freedom! yet thy banner torn but flying,
Streams like the thunder storm against the wind;
Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying;
The loudest still the tempest leaves behind.'
- Lord Byron, “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage”

Christian Frei opens The Giant Buddha's with a quote from Robert Byron, a noted British scholar of the Byzantine arts, who is quite clearly not Lord Byron, whom I thought the narrator was referring to without his title because he wasn't personally British, or something. Alas, though Byron managed to find time to bum choir boys and shag his sister, he didn't find time to stop off in Afghanistan to see the Giant Buddhas (Tch! They weren't even destroyed till March 2001! You think he could have fit it in.) Then again, neither did the western world see fit to bring the freedom Byron romanticizes there until long after the two Giant (53 meters tall) Buddhas of Bamiyan Valley were blown to bits. It, of course, required that the Taliban (or, ahem, forces acting alone but under their watch) destroy a couple of monuments to Capitalism in late 2001 before anything was done. Not to make light of the terrible loss of life of September 11th – but like the current American administration's paltry response to Hurricane Katrina, one can only wonder what the world would be like if we didn't often settle for too little, too late.

That's somewhat beside the point, of course. Though a strain of bitterness does remain in the hearts of many people of Afghanistan who loved and cherished these statues that they were happy to admit were ugly as heck (though once, long ago, surely beautiful.)

Though the film claims to be about the Buddhas themselves, it instead follows several paths all intertwined with their fate. The poor who lived in their shelter. A 17th Century Chinese Monk who saw them, and gave a quick mention to a 300 meter long Buddha in the same area that French Archeologist Zemarylai Tarzi is desperate to find. And Torontonian Nelofer Pazira's wish to see the wonders that her father did.

Frei however finds himself quite unable to stick strictly to even these storylines, with brief asides including a trip to a Chinese tourist park with a hidden reconstruction of a Bamiyan Buddha, and discussions of the possibility of a reconstruction attempt.

While every section in this film is in some way related to the Giant Buddhas, either through direct discussion or discussion of the effect of their lack of continued existence on people, the film feels aimless, despite its rather heavy handed attempts to make the viewer care about an event they may never even have heard of before. I personally hadn't, and in the end cared, but not much. As a film preaching to the converted, those affected by the loss of an important historical artifact, and interested in the personal stories of others also affected, this documentary is acceptable, though unlikely to excite. For anyone else, they're better of wasting an hour and a half on the Discovery channel.