Review of Siddhartha

Story in legend form of a Brahmin's son at the times of The Buddha who sets out on a journey to find himself. He tries living with the samanas, an ascetic sect, then with the followers of Buddha, but decides that he cannot follow any particular path which he has not found and experienced by himself. He crosses the river, the symbol of the division between the realm of the spirit and the realm of nature/life. After he has experienced the life in the city and become a successful business man, he returns to the river. If you want to be a complete human, you need to integrate the realm of the spirit with the realm of life. Siddhartha becomes the ferryman, the facilitator, on the river who enables others to share in his own experience by traveling back and forth between the two river banks which symbolize spirit and nature. The film does a beautiful job with stunning photography. The original English version with its archaic language often strikes the modern viewer as somewhat odd. The recent German version includes dubbed German which was edited skillfully by Ursula Michels-Wenz. The film is distributed in Europe by Winkler Films of Vienna, Austria. The German publisher of Hesse's works, Suhrkamp Verlag of Frankfurt, presently is still limiting a wider distribution and the release of a video version.