Brad Pitt is one of the biggest superstars of today with his extensive and incredible filmography. He has been riding the wave of fame and success since time immemorial and this wave does not seem to be coming to a halt anytime soon. Brad Pitt has a long road ahead of him on which he is bound to gain more and more success with each step.
However, it is not as if Brad Pitt has not seen downs and lows in his career path. In fact, one of his films not only performed weakly at the box office but also got him banned from a country. This was the 1997 film, Seven Years in Tibet directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. China absolutely disapproved of the film and was forced to take strict actions against the team.
Brad Pitt Got Banned From China
Jean-Jacques Annaud’s film Seven Years in Tibet is based on the Austrian SS sergeant, Heinrich Harrer’s 1952 namesake memoir. In the film, Heinrich, played by Brad Pitt, along with his friend Peter Aufschnaiter played by David Thewlis, are seen mountaineering in British India where they get imprisoned after World War II breaks out. The pair escape the prison and cross the border into Tibet. Soon after, they are welcomed into the Holy Land of Lhasa. Here, Heinrich meets the young, 14th Dalai Lama and becomes one of his tutors.
The film was condemned by China for portraying the military officers as rude and arrogant people who would cause trouble to the local residents. The country also disapproved of the positive depiction of the Dalai Lama.
According to author Erich Schwartzel, things got so bad that when the film’s production team was on the Tibetan Border in Ladakh, the locals harassed the team under pressure from China with threats of cutting off electricity and not allowing them to open bank accounts. This caused the team to create a replica of Lhasa in Andes, South America.
Moreover, Pitt, Thewlis, and Annaud were banned from the country. While Annaud was allowed back in 2012 thanks to the 15th Shanghai International Festival, Pitt’s ban was lifted only in 2016.
On the other hand, Sony Pictures, the film’s distributor, faced a horrifying end to their multi-billion dollar business as its parent company made most of its money through the electronics produced in China. Schwartzel wrote that the film was looked down upon by the country so much that Sony was at risk of losing a huge chunk of its business.
Brad Pitt Talks About Seven Years in Tibet
Despite what happened, Pitt believes that the film was a life-changing experience for him. Talking to Interview Magazine in 1997, the actor opened up about how his mindset about Tibet changed when he worked on the film. When asked if the film was a life-changing experience, Pitt stated,
“I’d say yes. Sure. All movies are. For an audience it’s 2 hours, but for me it’s a half year of living. And this one particularly. Being in a different culture for so long, you couldn’t help but walk out of there with something…I didn’t know anything about Tibet, really, and the first images in my head were of Shangri-la, and that’s not it at all. You just get these notions of an oasis in the middle of this violent world, but it’s the people who make it a Shangri-la, not the land.”
Seven Years in Tibet has a 58% Rotten Tomatoes score and it only made $131 million at the box office on a budget of $70 million. However, the film received a few accolades including a Political Film Society award for Peace and an award from Guild of German Art House Cinemas.
You can stream Seven Years in Tibet on Netflix.
Source: SCMP
