The Dalai Lama: Scientist

Directed by Dawn Gifford Engle, The Dalai Lama: Scientist explores the title figure’s fascination with science and his ongoing conversations with some of the complicated field’s smartest individuals. Filmmaker Engle has infused The Dalai Lama: Scientist with an egregiously (and excessively) dry sensibility that prevents the viewer from connecting with the material on a continuing basis, as the movie, which runs a fairly punishing 94 minutes, generally boasts the feel and tone of a college lecture that’s even been augmented with PowerPoint-like slides. There’s simply never a point at which Engle manages (or even attempts) to transform the Dalai Lama into a sympathetic, interesting figure (ie she seems to believe that the man is an inherently compelling person), which ensures that his various chats with esteemed scientists are hardly as compelling or captivating that Engle clearly believes them to be. (It doesn’t help, certainly, that the picture covers certain topics that are simply too complicated to hold the attention of an average viewer, with this especially true of the fairly baffling quantum entanglement stretch.) And although the film contains a small handful of intriguing stretches – there is, for example, an unexpectedly moving interlude detailing the Dalai Lama’s friendship with a dying neuroscientist – The Dalai Lama: Scientist predominantly comes off as an ineffective endeavor that more resembles a superficial promotional video more than a fully realized documentary.

** out of ****