Arriving in UK cinemas three years after it was made, and therefore too late for its short-term doomsaying to ring terribly true, Dirk Simon’s documentary about the ongoing fight to free Tibet from Chinese occupation would have seemed drearily polemical at any point. Baldly stating its righteous political position in Dennis Haysbert’s portentous (and swiftly abandoned) narration, the film then affords screen time to a healthy range of opinion, including engaging interview footage with the Dalai Lama himself. These talking heads, however, never form a dialogue with Simon’s own repetitive anti-Chinese soapboxing. You needn’t disagree with the film’s cause to feel oppressed by its propagandistic approach — not to mention Philip Glass’s relentlessly mournful score.
