Reincarnation is a fashionable concept, and some of us might even be prepared to say we believe in it. But would we spend years of our life searching for the reincarnated soul of someone we loved and revered? Tenzin Zopa has little doubt that his mentor, the Tibetan Buddhist master Geshe Lama Konchog, would certainly return to continue the task of bringing enlightenment to the mundane world, and this documentary by Israeli director Nati Baratz follows him on his four-year search for his reincarnated mentor, the “unmistaken child” of the title.
Tenzin Zopa, a gentle and soft-spoken monk, makes an appealing guide into a world that is quite as bizarre as anything that could be dreamt up in the wildest fantasy novel.
His determination to find the soul of his master reincarnated in a recently born child receives the blessing of his superiors, and various methods, including a consultation with a fortune-teller in Taiwan, are used to determine the child’s location.
The four-year search takes Tenzin Zopa through some of the most rugged terrain in the world, trials he endures without complaint. He is looking for a precocious child, and many of the dull-eyed village children he inspects in his travels all too clearly do not have a great soul residing within. The search itself is only part of the film, another aspect of the story being Tenzin Zopa’s spiritual journey to deal with the loss of a mentor he served unquestioningly for more than two decades.
During his travels, he presents children with various items his master possessed, seeking recognition in their eyes. What is most remarkable is that he finds a child, one who may or may not consciously be playing up to the man’s expectations. Whatever the explanation for the child’s responses, Tenzin Zopa is convinced he has found his master again.
The child is tested by a committee of senior monks, picking out items that belonged to the lama from a collection laid out before him. How much the child is guided by the wishes of the monks around him is left an open question. What is undeniable is the fact that his acceptance by the monks means that he is all but kidnapped into a monastic life, his parents tearfully accepting that an existence dedicated to bringing souls to enlightenment outweighs the their own puny claims to their son.
In Unmistaken Child, magic has two sides. While it brings a renewed sense of purpose to Tenzin Zopa, who must instruct the child in preparation for presentation to the Dalai Lama, and who acts in all ways as a servant to a new master, one cannot but question any belief that allows a child to be taken away from his family in such a cavalier fashion, whatever joy and sense of fulfillment it might bring to Tenzin Zopa himself. This is as much a story about a search as about a man’s attempts to deal with loss, a loss so traumatic that it could be interpreted as the disintegration of his world.
Tenzin Zopa’s own particular brand of naivete allows the story to be told with great frankness, a mixture of deep emotion and, for most of the audience, staggeringly absurd superstition. This is the great achievement of Unmistaken Child. It is delightful to watch Tenzin Zopa playing with his new mentor; achingly funny as the child, dressed in the ceremonial robes of a lama, plays dejectedly with plastic trucks and other toys he has been given to celebrate his elevation; and gut-wrenching to watch the parents acquiesce to the removal of their son.
The film does not ask any hard moral questions about the rightness of such actions in the modern world, content just to watch as events unfold. What it does is take the audience on a journey through a magical world in which the souls of the great and good really do come back to bless us — and then leaves us to form our own conclusions.
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