Paths of the Soul

Chinese director Zhang Yang’s Paths of the Soul is a captivating and profound portrait of a small group of Tibetan villagers on an arduous pilgrimage to the holy city of Lhasa. This meticulous and soulful film offers a rare glimpse of a startlingly difficult rite of passage, one that requires the devotees to not only walk 1,000 miles on a dangerous highway, but to kowtow the entire way, constantly dropping to a prone position and even touching their foreheads to the asphalt. Beautifully shot in a documentary style in the Himalayas, Zhang recruited villagers on the Tibet-Yunnan border to recreate the arduous pilgrimage. The trip is long and moves at the speed of the tractor that carries their supplies, but is not without drama. No obstacle can stop them from completing their odyssey as the group encounters birth, death, frigid temperatures, accidents and more. The journey becomes an astonishing representation of group dynamics and togetherness, and when they finally move on from magnificent Potala Palace into the breathtaking vistas by holy Mt. Kailash, the film radiates an unearthly beauty and the toil and suffering of both the trek and the pilgrims’ lives is magically transcended. —Gustavus Kundahl