The Venerable W. (2017) User Reviews

One pointed view

[mquenonex · 7/10 · 8 November 2017]

This is a good documentary, well made and interesting to watch.

However The Venerable W. has only one view point which is made up from the basic left wing ideas. Somehow these people suffer from naive approach to the cultural politics. To name one person as evil, is always a misstep since the world is never that simple.

I really would like to see a documentary about the Muslim hate towards Christianity and other religions, but this subject matter is just too hard for these documentaries to approach. So they rather take an easy path. This documentary is all about going through that lane.

This here is disappointing ...

[anxiousgayhorseonketamine · 5/10 · 22 October 2020]

Countless national groups around the world; probably scared by the Globalist agenda of merging populations to suit Big money interests; claim they want no external groups to live anywhere near themselves

The Ethnic Bengalis of Western Burma/Myanmar are a group rejected by many of the Burmese; Race and religion being the reason given

They have lived there for a very long time but were a minority group. The British Empire encouraged Bengalis from the Easternmost parts of its Indian Empire to move into those regions more

So really we are to an extent seeing yet another Colonial mess still producing nefarious results and being played out

Barbet Schroeder here makes a tame attempt at showing some of the mechanisms; but really in a clumsy way and a very one-sided one too; his entire view is centered around demonizing the Venerable W; a monk who does not seem as peace and love as Buddhists come across normally

The premise here seems to be Rohingyas are victims of racist intolerant Burmese led by W. End of debate. As I mentioned one-sided.

Religion and Racial hatred are very bad indeed. And plenty of that is evident in the last 20 years in Myanmar. But the story has many other levels and factors at play which are not even looked at. Globalization. The Fear of expanding population in Western Burma. None of this. Just bad racist guy here boohoo.

I am a HUGE fan of More La Vallée and other earlier films by Schroeder

This here is disappointing. Maybe documentary is not a medium for a man who is essentially an artist; a fiction artist. The rigour of research is sorely absent it seems.

It's important, but it's not a great film

[rick_7 · 9 October 2017]

A pretty good documentary from Barbet Schroeder − a former Éric Rohmer collaborator who now makes factual films about awful people − dealing with Ashin Wirathu, the world's naughtiest baby. Oh, OK, he's a Buddhist hate preacher. Who's eaten quite enough alms, by the looks of him.

It's more a potted history of the path to genocide − with a bit of access and some intelligently-compiled raw footage shot by others − than an in-depth portrait of its subject, though it's an important story and a timely primer on an urgent humanitarian crisis.

As a film, it might be more effective if it had taken the route of its trailer, which makes the Errol Morris-like decision to unveil The Venerable W's toxic Islamophobia at the midway point, rather than leading with it.

In the screening, a woman behind me tutted at everything from fascist rhetoric to burning bodies, as if otherwise we'd think that she was endorsing the behaviour in the film.