To complete his Trilogy of Evil, Barbet Schroeder tackles the religious and philosophical myth that has been closest to his heart since his youth : Buddhist pacifism, a belief which advocates selfless love for his fellow man and for all forms of life.

A Buddhist himself, Schroeder is confronted here with the quiet coldness of a monk whose boundless egotism is satisfied by having initiated ethnic cleansing leading to lynchings, the burning of entire villages and segregationist laws reminiscent of early Nazism. A two-legged oxymoron, Wirathu speaks with a gentle softness that expresses a pestilent hatred of unprecedented violence.

And this is the strength of the film: Schroeder allows this "venerable" to express himself freely on the screen, debunking in one stroke the favourable prejudices that have long surrounded Buddhist monks. By pouring out his stream of hatred and draping himself in his saffroned vanity, far from the humility preached by the Dharma, Wirathu reveals that Buddhism is, more often than not, a religion like any other: intolerant, misogynistic and controlling.

Therefore, after giving voice in the first two parts of his triptych to the tyrant Idi Amin Dada and to the controversial French lawyer Jacques Vergès, Schroeder demonstrates, once again, that the best way to denounce is to expose.

 

Richard Brouillette
Filmmaker, producer, chicken farmer, and accountant