Ancient Futures: Learning From Ladakh

Based on the book of the same title by Helena Norberg-Hodge, this insightful documentary looks at the influx of modernization over the past 20 years in Ladakh, a small country in the western Himalayas. The first part of the film examines the agricultural lifestyle of the farming families: their work, their play, their sense of community. The second half of the film focuses on developments in Leh, the capital, where cheap imports of necessities and scads of consumer trinkets are changing both the local economy and the values of the Ladakhi people. (In one of the most painfully ironic scenes in the film, a young Ladakhi boy reads out loud from an English reader, "these industries are changing our way of life."). Ancient Futures is occasionally guilty of romanticizing its subject: unquestionably the agrarian lifestyle is much better on the environment, but whether it's better in general, as the film implies, is certainly questionable. I'm not automatically convinced of the ennobling effects of spending most of one's day working in the dirt. Too, the film takes a major shortcut when it traces the current problems of Ladahki society to the introduction of Western technology--the filmmakers lose sight of the fact that technology itself is neither good nor bad; it's neutral, and we mustn't confuse wrongheaded utilization with inherent evil. Still, despite these qualms, Ancient Futures: Learning From Ladakh succeeds admirably in making us think very carefully about our relationship with the earth and with each other, and that's no small achievement. Highly recommended. (R. Pitman)