Himalaya sounds a lot like something you'd find at your local IMAX theatre.  For starters, it's full of stunning panoramic shots that can't help but overshadow an inferior plot.  The film tells the story of a young boy (kids are an IMAX staple) on track to become Chief of his Nepalese village, which means audiences will be treated to magnificent views of snow-covered mountains that practically dare people to cross them.

Anyone familiar with Iranian cinema will notice similarities between Himalaya (an awfully fun word to type) and that country's recent critical hit A Time For Drunken Horses – this could have been called A Time For Teetotaling Yaks.  Both films deal with impoverished villages whose survival depends on caravans that wind through the dangerous mountains. While Horses' characters smuggled contraband into Iraq, the people in Himalaya haul packs of salt hundreds of miles away to exchange for grain that will keep their tribes eating throughout the harsh winter months.

As Himalaya opens, the salt caravan has just returned to town.  One might think this would be a time for celebration, like when the fishing boats came home to Gloucester at the beginning of The Perfect Storm, but this time the convoy has returned with the remains of their Chief in a burlap sack. Lhakpa, we are told by his close friend and caravaneer Karma (Gurgon Kyap), died trying to follow a risky path.  Lhakpa's elderly father Tinle (Thilen Lhondup) doesn't believe Karma, suspecting he may have done something devious to assume his place in the community.

A power struggle ensues, with most of the villagers in favor of Karma taking over, but Tinle thinks the gig should remain in his lineage (he was the Chief before Lhakpa).  The only problem is that the family's next male heir is little boy named Tsering (Karma Wangel), who isn't nearly ready to man a salt caravan through mountains big enough to make Lance Armstrong burst into tears.

But that's not enough to stop crotchety old Tinle, who comes off as a taller, Far East version of Cotton from King of the Hill (he even has a few "I've been blah-blah-blah-ing since before you were born!" lines).  Tinle hauls his other son, Norbou (Karma Tensing), out of the monastery he was forced into as a boy and starts his own damn caravan (another fun word to type) with a few of the village elders, his grandson and his widowed daughter-in-law (Lhakpa Tsamchoe).

What follows is probably the closest thing we'll ever see to a Nepalese road-trip flick, as the two separate caravans (Karma's and Tinle's) embark on the salt-for-grain journey. There's one dicey scene where Tinle's crew tries to cross a very narrow mountain path, but filming it was probably a hundred times more precarious than it appeared on screen.  Not only are there no stunt doubles in Himalaya, there aren't any professional actors, either.  The faces weathered by the elements that you see on the screen really have to lug salt through the mountains to exchange for grain.

Some folks might complain about the lack of character development, but since Himalaya is populated by non-actors, beefing up their parts isn't going to be a positive thing.  It'd be one thing if the picture starred Brad, Julia, Haley Joel and Robert (as in Redford – his craggy puss would have been perfect), but the story here is kept pleasantly simple.  It's almost a fable - old customs (like using astronomy to tell you when to start the caravan) butting heads with modern thinking (like using medicine over hocus-pocus stuff).  But not too modern, mind you.  The only major problem with Himalaya is that there isn't supposed to be a clear-cut protagonist, yet it's hard not to root for Karma over the gratingly unpleasant Tinle.

Himalaya, which won César Awards for its score (Bruno Coulais) and cinematography (Eric Guichard), was Nepal's first-ever submission to the Academy Awards Best Foreign Language Film category in 1999 (it was actually nominated, too, but lost to Spain's All About My Mother).  The picture was directed by Eric Valli, a National Geographic photographer who, for the last 20 years, has lived in the same remote Dolpo region of Nepal in which Himalaya is set (he was also a unit director for Seven Years in Tibet).  The uncomplicated screenplay took four writers to tackle (one of whom, ironically, was a scribe on fellow 1999 Foreign Film nominee East-West).

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