Paths of the Soul: A Journey Into Humanity and Faith

Technically, Zhang Yang's film is a road movie, but a most unusual one in that it follows a group of devout peasants who are making a pilgrimage by foot from their Tibetan village to the holy city of Lhasa to visit a famous Buddhist temple and a nearby sacred mountain. The journey covers more than 1,000 miles, and the pilgrims must not only walk along the busy mountain roads, with their meager provisions in a tractor-hauled cart, but they must also “kowtow” along the way, falling face-down to the earth after every few paces, while wearing a traditional apron and wooden “gloves” (also clapped in conjunction with their prayers), the latter protecting their palms as they land. This odyssey is punctuated by episodes that are dramatic, albeit played in an extremely low-key fashion: the pilgrims pause at a rural clinic where a pregnant woman among them gives birth before taking up their mission again, and when they run out of money just short of their goal, they end up taking temporary jobs to raise needed funds. Paths of the Soul is a beautifully photographed and surprisingly moving film that blurs the line between documentary and fiction, using a script by Zhang that is based on actual pilgrimage stories and acted by a cast of non-professionals. Recommended. (F. Swietek)