Holy hooligans!

The Cup takes us inside a Buddhist monastery, where monks-in-training worship the game of football

By MATTHEW HAYS

That Western audiences have a fascination with Eastern cultures is pretty much a given. That cinematic dalliances with East-meets-West themes are successful isn't always a given. Witness the recent Jodie Foster effort Anna and the King, or The Replacement Killers, or Lethal Weapon 4 even. When the big studios do chime in on the East, it's usually either a flagrant effort to cash in, blatantly phony and condescending, or both.

And that's a big part of the success of The Cup, a film about Buddhist monks living in a monastery in India who are obsessed with catching the '98 World Cup on TV. That the film is both refreshing and pleasing should come as little surprise, considering that it wasn't made by an outsider; first-time director Khyentse Norbu is himself a pre-eminent lama of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

Aside from its lack of a condescending tone, perhaps what is most striking about The Cup is its sheer simplicity. The young monk Orgyen (Mayyang Lodro) and his friend Lodo (Neten Chokling) are two dedicated young students of the Buddhist tradition. But coming of age in a monastery isn't all fun and laughs; both young men are dying to catch the '98 World Cup. They sneak out in the middle of the night to catch a game at a seedy joint where they can pay to gaze at a TV.

Finally, Orgyen hatches a plan to locate a TV and to buy and hoist a satellite dish above the monastery so all of the monks can enjoy the final match. Part of this task involves convincing the monk hierarchy that this slice of decidedly Western culture will be as innocuous as it is fun. While the younger monks revel in their fascination with the sport, the older monks attempt to reconcile their holy traditions with this new, exotic influence in their midst.

Soccer not sex
Like the character in his screenplay, Norbu reports that one of the trickiest things about making The Cup was convincing the older Tibetan inhabitants of the Chokling Monastery (located near the Himalayas) that filmmaking itself didn't involve anything too nasty. "People were initially very uncomfortable doing a film," Norbu recalls. "Tibetans tend to think that all film is about sex and violence. I knew what my story was about, but they didn't. And I couldn't wander around explaining the entire thing to everyone. I also had a bit of an inner struggle with this--I'm trained as a philosophy teacher, not a filmmaker."

For Norbu, accuracy was an incredibly important element to The Cup. His cast is made up entirely of non-professional actors, most of them plucked from the monastery where the film is shot. Since the budget was tight, Norbu says most scenes were done in three takes or less, a testament, he argues, to the strict concentration demanded of young monks. Norbu says he doubts this level of accuracy could have been attained by an outsider. "Maybe not. Certainly not the performances; the backstories, those might have been hard for the cast to tell. The monks wouldn't feel comfortable about discussing their crushes on girls, for example, with someone else. But we're friends, and I know what we've been through in the past."

A world of inspiration
Though the injection of the game of football into a monastery may sound like the symbolic juxtaposition of a screenwriter, Norbu says this too was rooted in fact. For whatever reason, he says when he grew up in a monastery, a common obsession of the monks was soccer. People's fascination with sports, Norbu points out, often borders on the religious.

"India is a cricket nation. But Tibet is more of a football nation. There's something about the simplicity of it all. It's economical; there are no helmets, masks or uniforms. And the rules--it's basically just about getting the ball in between those posts."

Norbu--who cites both Japan's Yasujiro Ozu and India's Satyajit Ray as influences--describes the toughest part of creating The Cup as the production period itself. "Logistically, it was so tiring. The locations. The camera from Australia. The flying, driving, walking. We had no electricity, so that meant no dailies. We couldn't see what we were doing as we went along."

Though the filmmaking practice may have been new, Norbu, cast and crew employed traditional Buddhist practices while creating the film. The monastery was transformed into a film set for several weeks, meaning much of the cast and crew was up before 4 a.m. daily to pray before shooting would begin. Every decision surrounding the production was made after Norbu carefully consulted with yogis, oracles and diviners. Unpredictable weather was also a concern; numerous ritual prayer sessions were arranged to aid in a smooth shooting schedule (the film ended up in the can on time).

Culture clash?
But the results for the finished film have easily outstretched Norbu's wildest imagination, now that The Cup is winning over audiences internationally. "I didn't know it would take off like this. In Germany, the film is entering its 14th week--I guess it's understandable that the football idea would do extra well in Europe. I thought filmmaking would involve writing, shooting and maybe a few festivals. All this promotion is certainly new."

Early in his childhood, Norbu was identified by Buddhist religious leaders as the third incarnation of the historic Khyentse lineage (his duties include running a number of monasteries and colleges). Recently his duties have involved granting interviews to pump up The Cup, distributed in Canada by the nation's largest film company, the glitzy Alliance-Atlantis.

Forgive me for asking, as the question certainly implies a stereotypical comprehension of the Buddhist faith, but doesn't all this commercial, film-biz-related capitalist hype kind of clash with Norbu's traditional religious faith?

"It's true, we have to depend on foreign funding for filmmaking because of the expense. And our producers at least want to make their money back. But I feel one should make friends with this culture, then influence it to be more humanist. Instead of being influenced, to try to be the influence." :