Critics reviews

[In The Last Temptation of Christ,] Scorsese's Jesus is effectively pursued by God; throughout the film, he's hounded by voices, invisible figures, and agonizing pain. The Dalai Lama is pursued by tradition, ritual, and revelation: Kundun is filled with beautifully filmed depictions of elaborate Tibetan ceremonies, dream sequences, and apparitions, all set to Philip Glass's ethereal, pointedly repetitive score. It might be Scorsese's most stylized work.

For me at least, whenever memory alighted upon Kundun in these intervening years, the sensations were poignant and intense: the lush golds and crimsons, the dreamlike dissolves and dollies, the transporting drone of Philip Glass's score. From our vantage, it seems less a curveball now than a natural entry in one of the most eclectic filmographies in American cinema.