![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Lost Horizon
Mar. 8th, 2026 07:25 am Youtube was offering me the restored version of Frank Capra's Lost Horizon for free so I watched it.
Lost Horizon isn't a great movie but it's a significant one. I think you could probably say the same of James Hilton's book (not that I've read it). The fact that "Shangri La" has passed into the language as yet another synonym for Utopia suggests that it rang bells- and a lot of people were dreaming George Conway's dream in the run-up to WWII. I think that its re-emergence at this time of the breaking of nations is significant too. Those bells- those great Buddhistic, Tibetan temple bells- are still ringing.
Shangri La looks a lot like Southern California. And you have to wonder who built the shiny white modernist palace. The ruling caste is European and the peasants are hippy-hoppy-happy. It's a paternalist, colonialist vision of Utopia but it's better than no Utopia at all.
What does the High Lama's message boil down to? Be kind. And that never dates.
Lost Horizon isn't a great movie but it's a significant one. I think you could probably say the same of James Hilton's book (not that I've read it). The fact that "Shangri La" has passed into the language as yet another synonym for Utopia suggests that it rang bells- and a lot of people were dreaming George Conway's dream in the run-up to WWII. I think that its re-emergence at this time of the breaking of nations is significant too. Those bells- those great Buddhistic, Tibetan temple bells- are still ringing.
Shangri La looks a lot like Southern California. And you have to wonder who built the shiny white modernist palace. The ruling caste is European and the peasants are hippy-hoppy-happy. It's a paternalist, colonialist vision of Utopia but it's better than no Utopia at all.
What does the High Lama's message boil down to? Be kind. And that never dates.
