‘Travellers’ wander in dream state in East Asia paradise

Five years ago “The Cup,” the first film from the East Asian Kingdom of Bhutan, was an unexpected hit at Cannes, a sly, gentle comedy about a group of exiled Tibetan monks obsessed with the World Cup soccer finals. Its maker, Khyentse Norbu, himself a high-ranking lama and member of one of Bhutan’s noblest families, has returned with “Travellers & Magicians,” a film so enchanting one hates to see it come to an end.

Nestled in the Himalayas, Bhutan is a small country of about 70,000 people and awe-inspiring natural beauty. As it happens, such grandeur is lost on Dondup (Tshewang Dendup), a new government officer in a remote mountain village. A lover of all things American, young Dondup is swiftly bored and can’t wait to escape. An upcoming religious festival in Thimphu, Bhutan’s capital city, is to be his way out. Once there, he’ll contact a friend able to wrangle him a visa to the U.S. Delays in his departure cause Dondup to miss his bus, which plunges him into a series of encounters with other wayfarers, the most important being a monk (Sonam Kinga), a comically nosey fellow, a constant and tactless irritant but also a wise man and consummate storyteller. To pass the time among a small group of people hiking along the highway and hoping to hitch a ride with the rare passing vehicle, the monk commences a story, which will be interrupted many times, about Tashi (Lhakpa Dorji), a handsome young man of a farming family studying magic in a desultory fashion.

Tashi is much resented by his younger and brighter brother Karma (Namgay Dorjee), who longs for the opportunity for an education that Tashi does not appreciate. One day Karma mischievously spikes his brother’s wine with a potion that causes Tashi to dream that he is thrown from a beautiful white horse, landing him in a forest wilderness during a storm. Tashi seeks refuge with Agay (Gomchen Penjore), a rugged old man living in a treehouse with Deki (Deki Yangzom), his beautiful, dutiful but clearly unhappy young wife. Not surprisingly, Tashi and Deki swiftly are mutually attracted, which has dramatic and suspenseful consequences.

Norbu deftly cuts back and forth between Dondup and Tashi’s adventures, which are parallel stories about two restless young men with girls on their mind, dying to get away to a place of more fun and action.

The journey is one of the oldest and most timelessly potent storytelling devices, and Dondup’s sidetracked trip to the city becomes an amusing and poignant transforming experience -- but Norbu is not so sentimental as to suggest that Dondup will ultimately be swayed from trying to get to the U.S.

Norbu is not interested in neatly tying all the strands of Dondup’s story but rather in presenting Dondup with an alternative, one suggestive of the fate of Candide, who learned the value of cultivating his own garden -- and very much in keeping with Norbu’s Buddhist values.

The great thing about Norbu, as natural and humane a filmmaker as Jean Renoir, is that although his monk may be at times tiresomely preachy, he is not. Norbu has instead created with “Travellers & Magicians” a warm, embracing film of transcendent beauty and spirituality.

*

‘Travellers & Magicians’

MPAA rating: Unrated

Times guidelines: Mature themes but suitable for sophisticated older children

Tshewang Dendup...Dondup

Lhakpa Dorji...Tashi

Sonam Kinga...The Monk

Deki Yangzom...Deki

Gomchen Penjore...Agay

A Zeitgeist Films release of a Prayer Flag Pictures production. Writer-director Khyentse Norbu. Producers Raymond Steiner and Malcolm Watson. Executive producer Jeremy Thomas. Cinematographer Alan Kozlowski. Editors John Scott and Lisa-Anne Morris. Music Dechen Dorjee, Donam Dorji, Jigme Drukpa, Bon Funk. Costumes Claudia Bahls, Jamyang Choden. Production designer Raymond Steiner. Art director Ugyen Wangchuk. In Dzongkha with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes.

Exclusively at the Nuart through Thursday, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 281-8223.