"Mountain Patrol": Chinese biopic is a drama of epic proportions

One of the most beautiful and disturbing widescreen epics in last year's Seattle International Film Festival, "Mountain Patrol: Kekexili" is back for a regular run at the Varsity.

Chinese writer-director Lu Chuan's movie (reminiscent of David Lean's sprawling spectacles and Akira Kurosawa's Oscar-winning tale of survival in the wild, "Dersu Uzala") is based on the true story of a mid-1990s battle between poachers — who had nearly wiped out the Tibetan antelope — and a volunteer patrol trying to stop the slaughter.

When the poachers kill a patrolman, a Beijing reporter (Zhang Lei in his screen debut) turns up and befriends the patrol leader, convincing him that publicity will be good for his cause. But the outsider finds himself shocked by the violence on both sides, and by the hypocrisy of the patrolmen, who have little money or authority and end up selling the antelope pelts they'd confiscated from the poachers.

Movie review

Showtimes and trailer

"Mountain Patrol: Kekexili," with Duo Bujie, Zhang Lei. Written and directed by Lu Chuan. 89 minutes. In Mandarin and Tibetan, with English subtitles. Not rated; includes violence, brief profanity. Varsity.

Charismatic, pragmatic and sometimes suicidally stubborn, the patrol leader quickly becomes the focus of the story, and veteran actor Duo Bujie ("A Tibet Story") does a splendid job of capturing his many moods. Whether he's sending an elderly poacher off on a trek that may kill him, or he's offering rationalizations to his guest, or he's dealing with less-than-competent underlings, the actor always finds a way of making his actions seem a natural expression of his personality.

Co-produced by the National Geographic Society and shot on location in Kekexili, an animal reserve identified in the subtitles as "the last virgin wilderness of China," the film mixes crisp images of icy mountains and a star-crowded sky with dreamier shots that suggest the shimmering instability of a mirage. The landscapes are barren, inhospitable, indifferent yet unfailingly gorgeous.

The cinematographer, Cao Yu, is equally at home with the movie's more nightmarish moments: a patrolman trapped by quicksand, a field littered with hundreds of antelope corpses, a young man protesting "I don't want to die" as the stream of blood from his punctured artery makes death all but certain.

"If you don't make it, that's your fate," says the patrol leader at a crucial turning point in the story. It seems a cruel judgment at that moment. By film's end, it drips with unintended irony.

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com