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Kundun
Metascore
74 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 26 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 21 out of 26
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 26
  3. Negative: 0 out of 26
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  1. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    Aug 2, 2011
    100
    Whether Kundun is a perfect movie or not, it's an important and beautiful one. Scorsese's movie takes us into a world we've rarely seen with this kind of sympathy or detail: a magical-looking society built on Buddhism and centuries of art and tradition.
  2. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Liam Lacey
    100
    A great film about a good man.
  3. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jami Bernard
    100
    Brilliant. [24 December 1997, p. 24]
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  4. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    100
    Throughout the film cause and effect, the mainspring of most narratives, is replaced by a sense of spiritual synchronicity.
  5. Newsweek
    Reviewed by: David Ansen
    90
    Think of it as an epic poem, in which Scorsese's swirling, headlong baroque camera searches paradoxically for the stillness at the meditative heart of Buddhism. [22 December 1997, p. 86]
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  6. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    90
    This is rapture in pictures. [22 December 1997, p. 81]
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  7. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Ron Wells
    80
    Scorcese has made one of his best and most personal films...Kundun is also mercifully free of white teachers or saviors, such as, oh, say, Brad Pitt?
  8. Empire
    Reviewed by: Ian Freer
    80
    The net result is difficult and demanding viewing yet strangely thrilling.
  9. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Charles Taylor
    80
    Kundun, which was written by Melissa Mathison ("E.T.") from interviews conducted with the Dalai Lama, doesn't make you greedy for its images the way some gorgeous films do. It allows you to drink each one in tranquilly.
  10. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    It provides a deep spirituality, but denies the Dalai Lama humanity; he is permitted certain little human touches, but is essentially an icon, not a man.
  11. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    75
    Taking great commercial risks, director Martin Scorsese avoids movie-star performances and the psychological storytelling that Hollywood movies normally thrive on.
  12. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Peter Stack
    75
    Stunning, odd, glorious, calm and sensationally absorbing.
  13. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Mike Clark
    75
    Stately but static. [23 December 1997, p.3D]
    All this critic's reviews
  14. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Sandra Contreras
    70
    Unlike this year's earlier Tibetan-themed biopic, "Seven Years in Tibet", Martin Scorsese's quietly devastating film really IS about the Dalai Lama.
  15. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Denby
    70
    Gorgeously shot and utterly respectful of the story of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, but it’s dramatically inert.
  16. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    70
    A stunningly beautiful object offered in tribute to a holy man, a gorgeous film that is nevertheless burdened by the defects of its virtues. Careful and respectful, it is everything a movie about the Dalai Lama should be except dramatically involving.
  17. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    70
    It's all very beautiful, not to mentioned high-minded. But the loftiness comes at a sacrifice.
  18. Slate
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    70
    The music ties together all the pretty pictures, gives the narrative some momentum, and helps to induce a kind of alert detachment, so that you're neither especially interested nor especially bored. Perhaps that's a state of Buddhist enlightenment.
  19. Variety
    Reviewed by: Emanuel Levy
    70
    Ultimately Kundun emerges as a movie that's hypnotic without being truly compelling, sensuously stunning but not illuminating.
  20. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    70
    May not be the ultimate word on the Tibetan situation, or even the Dalai Lama, but its heart seems to be in the right place; and it's entertaining enough to give audiences an emotional sense of the story. [16 January 1998, p.N32]
    All this critic's reviews
  21. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    63
    Most of the film is dull and soporific. Breathtaking photography without emotional involvement can take an audience only so far.
  22. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    60
    A slow, meditative movie-an appropriate choice given the subject matter-that ultimately fails, in spite of clearly heartfelt good intentions, because of its almost inhuman detachment.
  23. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    60
    I wanted to be transported by this movie; I wasn't quite. But I respect it.
  24. San Francisco Examiner
    Reviewed by: Barbara Shulgasser
    50
    Martin Scorsese is certainly one of the great living movie directors. Sadly, this does not mean he can't make a mistake. Kundun is a mistake.
  25. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marc Savlov
    50
    For a film focusing on such a rich emotional tapestry, Kundun is strangely lacking in its emotional core.
  26. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    50
    At once spectacular and inert -- a mosaic impersonating a movie; an empty-shell epic.
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