Kyentse Norbu alias Dzongsar Jamyang Kyentse Rinpoche is a noble Bhutanese monk incarnation of Jamyang Kyentse Wangpo a saint of Tibet's Dzongsar Monastery, but he is also a talented director that has trained in India and in the West (England, USA) with the best such as Bernardo Bertolucci. Actually he assisted BB during the Bhutanese scenes of "Little Buddha", where he also played a small part. Film making has become his destiny and recognizing this great passion, like all great Authors, he has started writing and filming what he knows best. Monastery life is at the base of "The Cup" (1998-1999) and all the non professional actors are actually monks of his monastery reciting their own roles. The story narrates a real fact and was filmed exactly in the same locations it depicts (Think of "Seven Years in Tibet" filmed in Argentina and other Tibetan movies sadly reconstructed in studios !). Maybe these are one of the elements of the beauty of this serene and funny movie.
The Cup (World Cup 1988) is a semi-biographical tale about a young monk's obsession with soccer in our globalized era of satellite-TV. Orgyen must be around 13-14 years old and like all kids (Italians at least!) his age he cut out picture of his heroes (Zidane and Ronaldo) from sports magazines to plaster his room. He has an older friend with similar enthusiasm and manages to drag in his obsession anyone he comes in contact with. Naturally the Abbot and the Supervisor are worried about him ( and here I remembered the nuns in the Sound of Music worried about Maria), but the Monastery now living in exile in India also has other problems. Two novices are secretly conducted from Tibet because their family wants them raised in a religious habitat. This is a pretext to inform us of the terrible conditions of modern Tibet, were there is no freedom of religion and the natural inhabitants live in a culturally and physically violent climate. Reality suddenly budges into the apparently pastoral setting of the Monastery.
Orgyen and Lodo, his friend, help the two novices adapt the monastic life, but Orygen sometimes goes on to brainwash them into his soccermania. A group of monks flees in the night to watch the matches on the only local TV, but due to their unquenchable "tifo" (as we call it in Italy) they get kicked out and won't have occasion to watch the finals. With great determination Orgyen convinces the Abbot to give his permission to rent an antenna, but money is a problem and the solution to this is not completely ethical.... Buddhist compassion gets run over by the soccer fever. However, during the difficultly conquered game, reason comes back into the frenzied Orygen and after a few days, when routine steps back again everyone is transformed.... Only the Chinese are still serving rice in Tibet.
The Cup is a delightful, intense, peaceful and deep movie. It juxtaposes modern and ancient culture, the East and the West, global myths such a soccer and Buddhist thought, telling at the same time the story of the Tibetan diaspora and showing the great elasticity of this ethnicity. This movie not only looks good and smells good, it is also very well shot. There are no moments of fall of attention and the beauty of some scenes is breathtaking.