Film: Hollywood gets religion

But the evangelism in Brad Pitt's Seven Years is for Buddhism | Chris Stamper

Blond-haired, blue-eyed Brad Pitt, the ultimate specimen of Aryan perfection, has the part of his life in Seven Years In Tibet, based on a true story. He's Heinrich Harrer, the buff Nazi who befriends the young Dalai Lama as Red Chinese troops storm Tibet.

In 1939, Harrer leaves his Fatherland and a pregnant wife for the Himalayas to scale the Nanga Parbat peak. When he finally succeeds, the British capture him and his companion (David Thewlis) and throw them into a POW camp. The pair escape and sneak off toward Tibet, finding sanctuary in the previously forbidden city of Lhasa. Then the real plot gets underway.

All this setup takes several reels of film and portrays little except Brad Pitt's phony German accent. When he finally meets Tibet's young Buddhocrat, Mr. Pitt is blown off the screen by the debut performance of young Jamyang Wangchuk as the boy king who finds Harrer fascinating and begs him for details about things Occidental.