Louis Nero’s Milarepa - An Audacious Updating of Buddhist Myth

Italian Independent Cinema: Screens in Freedom - the Italian Cultural Institute in London’s ongoing screening series - is having an early love affair with genre. With Mimì – Prince of Darkness offering a blood-spattered vampire tale last time out, filmmaker Louis Nero was in town to introduce his fantasy saga Milarepa, adapting the life story of the titular Buddhist saint to an ambiguous post-apocalyptic setting. Stacked with surprisingly iconic American actors for an Italian production - the most famous being Harvey Keitel and F. Murray Abraham - part of the film’s appeal is gradually surmising what it exactly is, with its combination of disparate global and theological elements.

Nero’s first tweak from the story’s Buddhist origins is changing the central figure’s gender: Milarepa is now the early-teenage girl Mila (played here by Isabelle Allen), the central figure of an archetypal hero’s journey. Indeed, a representative from the Tibetan Buddhist community was present on the night, and asked in the post-film Q&A about the rationale for departing in fidelity. Still, Nero’s change is an adroit one: the emphasis of the story now becomes Mila’s attempts to break into the exclusively patriarchal domain of sorcery and its teachings.

For a viewer like myself with more grounding in the Western cultural canon, I projected my own associations onto the story, starting with the aforementioned idea of the hero’s journey. In the film’s strange setting, society has reverted to its pre-technological origins, with the population organised in clans and settlements. After Mila’s father dies, his wealth and possessions are transferred to an uncle, leaving her immediate family destitute. Although there’s no murder conspiracy, many audiences would see a parallel to Shakespeare’s Hamlet in how the father’s sudden death spurs Mila to decisive action.

Mila’s interest in magic initially sparks when the legendary sorcerer Marpa (Harvey Keitel, almost unrecognisable) stops at her home to rest, as he undertakes a long pilgrimage. But to take revenge on her uncle, she seeks guidance from the magician Yungutun (Hal Yamanouchi), disguising herself as a boy to gain entrance to his training academy. Whilst there, she learns the horrible potential her skills at sorcery might have, well visualised by Nero as biblical cataclysms of hailstorms and fire. A later meeting with Marpa, who’s nursing unprocessed traumas himself, will allow Mila to become a fully enlightened practitioner of magic, like the “siddha” of the old legend.

Nero’s screenplay tracks Mila’s moral growth at a steady pace, making us fully comprehend the obstacles she faces, whether from outside forces or within herself. Her status as a figure of identification risks her being a cipher, devoid of more personality beyond her righteousness and drive; Allen’s chemistry with her other cast members - all of whom come from different cinema cultures - often fails to ignite the drama. Yet as Milarepa concludes, with Mila and Marpa forging a bond not unlike a surrogate father and daughter, we feel Nero’s conviction in retelling this story, grounded as it is in his own spiritual connection to Buddhism.