Story Of `Little Buddha' Gently Bridges East, West

Movie review

XXX "Little Buddha," with Keanu Reeves, Chris Isaak, Bridget Fonda, Ying Ruocheng, Alex Wiesendanger. Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, from a screenplay by Mark Peploe and Rudy Wurlitzer. Guild 45th. "PG" - Parental guidance suggested, some frightening imagery. -----------------------------------------------------------------

For every moment of brilliance in "Little Buddha" there is a commensurate weakness, and for every modest epiphany there is an unfulfilled promise of emotional impact. Yet Bernardo Bertolucci's latest film is in many ways his most ambitious and heartfelt, and certainly his most accessible, a visually spectacular, PG-rated adventure through the one territory that movies have so sadly neglected: the spiritual dimension.

Bertolucci set out to create an engaging primer on the basic tenets of Buddhism - and as a studied layman he has gloriously succeeded - but he's not out to convert lost souls in the cinema. Rather, "Little Buddha" uses a gentle story to bridge Western skepticism and Eastern philosophy in a mutually beneficial union, and its richness (which for this viewer was more apparent upon a second viewing) lies in appreciating the simple grace of that achievement.

In a Buddhist monastery in Bhutan, an ailing but still vital Lama Norbu (sagely played by Ying Ruocheng) receives notice that his late teacher may have been reincarnated as Jesse (Alex Wiesendanger), a 9-year-old boy living with his architect father (popular musician Chris Isaak) and math teacher mother (Bridget Fonda) in a large modern home on Seattle's Queen Anne hill.

In the film's most charming scene, Jesse's parents are informed of this spiritual legacy by Lama Norbu and his cherubic assistant, and Jesse accepts his special status as a welcomed gift, later greeting two other potential reincarnates with suspicion followed by friendship.

Spurred on by a professional crisis, Jesse's initially skeptical father accompanies him to Katmandu and Bhutan, where Jesse's Buddhist learning resumes with a storybook about Buddhism's origins. With that, Bertolucci leaps back 2,500 years to relate the story of Prince Siddhartha (Keanu Reeves), and it is here - as opposed to the sterile, deliberately washed-out pallor of the Seattle scenes - that "Little Buddha" bursts into the vibrant colors of an epic spiritual quest.

Courtesy of Bertolucci's long-time cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, the breathtaking Siddhartha sequences turn "Little Buddha" into half of a great film, and each unwelcomed return to Seattle - where Fonda and the sorely miscast Isaak engage in perfunctory soul-searching - leaves you hungering for the ancient adventure, in which the formerly sheltered Siddhartha learns the meaning of suffering, death and meditative transcendence.

Despite such distractions as a salon-styled hairdo and an inconsistent accent, the ascetically skeletal Reeves is innocently effective in a role that might have been embarrassing, and although Bertolucci's use of special effects seems like a concession to mainstream audiences, their inclusion lends a mythic dimension to Siddhartha's meaningful odyssey.

By the time "Little Buddha" completes its own life cycle, gliding on a sunlit Puget Sound to the powerful strains of Ryuichi Sakamoto's evocative score, the film's inconsistencies have grown easy to forgive. With the kind of dignity rarely found in movies today, Bertolucci has tried - if only with mixed success - to address the things that really matter.