Buddhist Film Festival // My Mandala

My friend Armar invited me and his sister Arlyn to watch a movie for the Buddhist Film Festival over the weekend. He was excited about it because the movie director herself would be present and hold a Q&A session after the film showing.

So we showed up at Shaw cinema and got ushered into a ridiculously cold, massive theatre. Large theatres are not common in Singapore, so whenever I find myself in one, I can’t help but be amazed.

Just as we found our seats, a woman announced that if we felt cold, we could buy blankets for 10 bucks, all proceeds of which would go to… okay, I forgot where. We joked amongst ourselves that they had probably purposely turned the air conditioning on so low so they could sell those blankets. Luckily, Arlyn and I brought scarves, so we could use those to keep warm.

Before the movie started, the same woman who made the blanket announcement gave a brief introduction. There were going to be two movies, she said. One was a short film about Chinese poems, while the second one was called My Mandala, a Chinese feature length film with English subtitles.

The story is about a con artist who pretends to be a Tibetan lama and dupes a woman into bringing him into her home as a live-in lama to help her dead son move on from this world, much to the displeasure of her husband. The present timeline is interspersed with flashbacks from the con artist’s past, mostly moments he had with his elder brother who taught him the tricks of the con trade.

The movie has an unusual premise and gives off an indie vibe, which makes it interesting if you’re willing to watch non-cookie cutter kind of films. There were a lot of laugh-out-loud scenes, and also poignant ones, and there were splashes of good cinematography. It also had a good plot and theme. It wasn’t super brilliant and I’m honestly not sure if I could recommend it to my friends who usually just like mainstream movies, but it was good enough for me to feel that it wasn’t a waste of time or money or suffering through a cold cinema for.

After the credits rolled, the director, Elsa Yang, went up front to answer some questions. We didn’t ask any. But the questions and answers we did hear (and which were translated from Chinese to English or vice versa) shed some light on some events that happened in the story, and on the theme, which is supposed to be about how family is more important than pride or money. We also found out that the director had co-written the script and asked for the help of a real Tibetan lama to teach the actor some chants which he used in the dialogue.

The director, Elsa Yang, is the woman on the right

So overall, I’d say this was a great experience. 🙂