Martin Scorsese's Kundun incidentally rides a wave of Hollywood Enlightenment, recent Hollywood tributes to Tibet that include the coma-inducing Seven Years In Tibet and a freedom concert that showcased several top-drawer rock performers.

But Kundun is hardly fashionable entertainment. From his mob trilogy (Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino) to more subdued fare (The King of Comedy and The Last Temptation of Christ), Scorsese has examined our human capacity for unfeeling. (Even his period piece, The Age of Innocence, is about a quiet, insidious torture that Victorian society inflicts upon a forbidden couple, though to say it deals with violence in and of itself is, admittedly, a stretch.) Kundun recounts the early years of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, the personification of the Buddha of Compassion, a man whom, by fate and by training, will never understand or realize his potential for brutality.

1937: a monk's search for the reincarnated body of the Dalai Lama has led him to a farm in Amdo, where he asks a precocious tyke to choose from a selection of antiques the ones that belonged to him in a previous life. The clincher is a pair of specs; the boy, Kundun, is then raised by the church as a peaceful leader, reminded throughout childhood to never pass judgment on others. As an adult, no longer shadowed from the details of Tibet's political strife, Kundun (Tenzin Thuthob Tsarong) cannot fathom the Chinese hatred of his country's theocratic rule--he accepts Chairman Mao's Seventeen Point Agreement only to suffer terrorism and Chinese dictatorship. No other country will assist Tibet in retaliation; the Dalai Lama reluctantly flees his homeland.

Kundun is magical. Aided, as always, by the brilliant editor Thelma Schoonmaker (plus new collaborators famed cinematographer Roger Deakins and composer Philip Glass), Scorsese didn't so much assemble Kundun as weave a complex cinematic tapestry, a narrative that presents untraditional pathways into its emotional filling. Consider the picture's closing moments, which visually parallel the Dalai Lama's plight with the creation and subsequent destruction of a colourful sand painting. The very temporariness of the artwork becomes overwhelmingly sad.

Scorsese also yields accomplished realizations from a host of unknown actors. This is the first time he has worked extensively with children, and they all deliver candid, spirited performances. But grown-up Robert Lin's turn as Chairman Mao is perhaps the film's most memorable. The Dalai Lama is said to have been so sickened by the words escaping Mao's lips--"Religion is poison"--that he stopped listening, focusing instead on Mao's spit-polished shoes. Scorsese demonstrates this in powerful close-ups: he turns the shoes into a shiny symbol of oppression, with Lin walking a mile in them to chilling effect.

Buena Vista's no-frills Kundun DVD is a digital marvel. While not 16x9-enhanced, the widescreen-only (2.35:1) image is close to perfect, crystal clear save for a few soft wide shots. There is the slightest bit of pixellation in a beam of light from a projector (the Dalai Lama enjoys watching films--these scenes are really a nod to Scorsese's priestly devotion to motion pictures), but nothing offensive. Colours are perfectly saturated (VHS and LaserDisc would no doubt make a mess out of Kundun's rich pallette of reds), and shadow detail is amazing. (The true test of a video transfer is how good the low-light scenes look; here, the various and plentiful interiors (mostly the rooms of a dark monastery) do the format justice.)

The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is also stunning. Phillip Glass' score is expansive and well-mixed with dialogue. Various sound effects, such as a gun-blast and an explosion, have such low frequency impact that they startled me, but fear not: you won't be riding the volume control. A theatrical trailer (in 2.0 Dolby) is included on the disc, presented in something closer to Kundun's Super35 negative aspect ratio (about 1.66:1). It's blurry but not unwatchable. The menus are uninventive. All in all, a great, passionate, unusual work from Scorsese (who dedicated the film to his late mother, the beloved Catherine Scorsese), and a deservedly excellent home video presentation, a Disney typical lack of anamorphic encoding and bonus material aside.-Bill Chambers