A Righteous Farewell from Tibet’s Maestro

A buoyant comedy-drama that strikes a balance between rage and harmony, “Xue Bao” (“Snow Leopard”) was completed just weeks before the death of its director, Pema Tseden, at age 53. During his nearly 20-year career, Tseden emerged as the premier Tibetan filmmaker by bucking Western cinema’s exotifying trend and painting the region in realistic hues, while maintaining a spiritual bent. His career-defining exploration of the tension between modernity and tradition was visible in his debut, “The Silent Holy Stones,” which featured the memorable scene of a group of Buddhist monks gathered around a TV set to watch a Chinese soap opera. This collision of worlds and perspectives continues through his final film, a morality play steeped in the real and surreal that pits two brothers against each other in a peculiar predicament. Inevitably, Chinese authority looms large.

Rather than introducing us directly to the shepherd characters at the center of “Snow Leopard,” Tseden guides us toward them through the eyes of four boisterous young metropolitan friends who work for a local TV station. As they drive out to the frigid countryside to capture a news story, they sing together and engage in playful banter. However, when the group picks up one of their former classmates, referred to as the “snow leopard monk” (Tseten Tashi), the vibe shifts. It remains respectful, but there’s a hesitance now — an invisible barrier that turns the friends’ demeanor awkward.  

In these introductory scenes, the diminutive Snow Leopard Monk — nicknamed for his love of the elusive creature — feels like an outsider even in his own land, and the urban quartet are fascinated by the seeming contradiction of his interest in high-tech nature photography. The story they’re all traveling to capture, outside the monk’s childhood home, involves a rare snow leopard breaking into his family’s sheep pen and feeding on nine castrated rams. The monk’s gruff older brother, Jinpa (played by an actor of the same name) aggressively reminds everyone of these specifics in lengthy, enrapturing monologues brimming with rage, since it’s a loss for which he demands to be reimbursed. 

The creature remains trapped in the pen, a story that’s newsworthy given not only the rarity of snow leopard sightings, but the fact that under Chinese law, it happens to be a “Class A” protected animal, leading to disagreements over how to proceed. The TV newsmen are just there to observe; they don’t have any input, or any stakes in the outcome, but they’re more than happy to inconvenience the locals if it means getting a better shot. The monk’s grandfather (Losang Choepel) has been saving up for a religious pilgrimage he wants to take with his younger son before he dies, so he hopes for a quick solution, but that might not be so easy. Jinpa is hell-bent on either killing the animal himself, or holding it for ransom until the local authorities compensate him for the loss of his sheep. All the while, the monk’s fascination with the snow leopard (as well as his own doctrine) makes him prone to peaceful and nonviolent solutions. But the first time he comes within a stone’s throw of the majestic animal, something strange, magical and downright confounding happens.

Without realizing it, the monk finds himself not only face to face with the leopard, but engaging it in a form of metaphysical, spiritual communication. As they lock eyes, the monk is inexplicably transported to some other realm — a dream? A memory? It’s hard to say — in which he and the leopard interact across several months and years, a subplot that frequently interrupts the sheep pen saga. Each time the film cuts back to this gorgeously photographed, black and white realm, more time has passed, and the monk and the leopard have formed an uncanny, wordless bond.

Where most of the film is shot in hand-held long takes, maintaining a sense of urgency about the ongoing conundrum, the camera remains still during these avant-garde detours, drawing light and echoes from all directions. Tseden creates a shared, harmonious cinematic space between the monk and his brother animal; an abstract and peaceful realm in which his family’s ongoing conflict — over whether or not to kill the creature — no longer exists. It’s an idealistic spiritual vision, shared between a creature who kills on instinct, and a man whose religious instruction compels him never to kill.

However, reality isn’t quite as simple as following a peaceful doctrine. The easily-agitated Jinpa delivers sermon after sermon at length — to the news camera, and to Tseden’s camera — about why he remains so resolute in his demands. The local authorities and government drones, he says, care more about the leopard than about his well-being, or that of his wife and infant child. The situation enrages him to the point of getting in the face of black-clad Chinese police officers, catalyzing a violent scene that mirrors a real incident from Tseden’s life, during which he may have been the victim of excessive force by Chinese police.

Despite its serene view of the Tibetan tundra, it’s hard not to read “Snow Leopard” as a deeply personal, deeply frustrated screed against authority — albeit in hushed tones, given its need to pass through the censorious hands of the China Film Administration before being released. Jinpa, though he raises his voice in misguided ways, is the only character who appears to speak up against the perceived slights of the Chinese state. Other Tibetan characters try to find more diplomatic or even “righteous” solutions, but the deadlock posed by local government agents and police captains — who repeat themselves in drone-like fashion — makes this a frustrating affair.

In “Snow Leopard,” Chinese authority is, at once, dangerous and farcical, trapping people in desperate circumstances while behaving childishly, even when they terrorize the poor Tibetan shepherds. For instance, the police’s threats (and the shepherd’s desperate attempts at negotiation) need to be slowly, painstakingly translated between Chinese and Tibetan. This results in an outstretched and darkly comedic rigamarole that Tseden captures in long, unbroken takes once more, highlighting the ridiculousness at hand. Even the indignities the locals suffer can’t be delivered to them on their own terms. Jinpa, therefore becomes an embodiment of a righteous fury even in his callous bloodthirst, with Jinpa delivering, in the process, a spellbinding performance that veers between hilarious and magnetic.

All the while, the stalemate of what ought to be done with the snow leopard has a parallel answer, though it is one that cannot be approached on a physical plane, or in a literal manner. Not when the rules that govern such actions are so absurd. This answer — one of cooperation — lies in the spiritual realm that exists somewhere between the leopard’s and the monk’s consciousness, as if their connection held secret wisdom about how to live righteously. It’s a striking final vision with which Tseden leaves us: a place that embodies an understanding, or perhaps even a latent human desire, to live in harmony with nature — the kind of dream made increasingly impossible by the disharmonious forces of our civilization.