`TIBET' MISSES SUMMIT ON SPIRITUAL CLIMB.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

``Seven Years in Tibet'' has a story of spiritual awakening and social injustice, extreme real-life adventure, Brad Pitt at his blond godliest and even an 11th-hour scandal that should call everything about the movie into extra-textural question.

With all of that going for it, you'd think the results would be intriguing. But the ambitiously mounted ``Tibet'' is too often tedious. Superficial insights and a disheartening reliance on Hollywood hokum take away from what an impressive physical production and occasionally moving storytelling accomplish. It's like an arduous expedition that never gets to its destination.

Which is, at least, a two-pronged goal: detailing a jerk's redemption and calling attention to a jerk nation's subjugation of a peaceful neighbor. Both trails are approached with tried-and-true, melodramatic equipment. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud (``Quest for Fire,'' ``The Bear'')and screenwriter Becky Johnston (``The Prince of Tides''), working off of Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer's 44-year-old memoir, felt free to make up whole aspects of the story and, no surprise, it plays that way.

Of course, now that we know Harrer himself has been downplaying the extent of his youthful Nazi affiliations for half a century - something that has only come to light in the last few months, well after the movie completed filming - you can't accuse Annaud and Johnston of doing too much damage to what was obviously not a full accounting in the first place. You can, however, wish that they would have come up with metaphors that resonate better than, say, music boxes.

We meet Harrer (Pitt) as he's coldly bidding goodbye to his very pregnant wife at an Austrian train station in 1939. Having conquered the Eiger's north wall a year earlier, the arrogant, self-absorbed sportsman is off to join a Reich expedition up Nanga Parbat, one of India's tallest mountains. The Austrian team is nearly killed and forced to turn back before reaching the Himalayan summit. By the time they come down, World War II has broken out and the British arrest them.

Harrer and his climbing partner, Peter Aufschnaiter (English actor David Thewlis), sit out most of the duration in a northeast Indian internment camp. They escape for good near the war's end and, rugged climbers that they are, pursue the insane strategy of crossing into neutral Tibet, then working their way for thousands of miles to the Japanese lines.

This, of course, does not succeed. After wandering for months in Tibet's hostile wastelands, they come upon the capital, Lhasa. Though it's forbidden to most foreigners, the Europeans soon become exotic celebrities there, ultimately attracting the attention of the isolated, adolescent dalai lama (the very appealing Jamyang Jamtsho Wangchuk).

The child god-ruler has an insatiable curiosity about all things Western. Harrer, who has been rejected long-distance by the son he's never seen (one of the filmmakers' fabrications), is honored to be appointed the boy's tutor. Their warm and mutually nurturing relationship - by far the film's best stuff - gives the kid some semblance of a normal childhood and Harrer an introduction to his own heart.

But then the Chinese communists invade and the lama must dispense with childish things and try to lead his people. Harrer, of course, thinks the situation is just awful, which it is. In fact, we hear him thinking about how awful it is that he once subscribed to an oppressive philosophy himself, but it doesn't resemble anything the man has actually said about his Nazi connections (the lines were added at the last minute, following the recent revelations).

It's somewhat unfair to carp about how much more interesting a moral journey ``Seven Years in Tibet'' might have been had it really explored Harrer's evolution from fascist to humanist. You can't entirely blame this one on typical Hollywood stupidity; Harrer has been an admired member of the international sports community, big chunks of academia and, of course, the free Tibet movement for decades, and those worthy groups have not seen fit in all that time to dig into his prewar record. Still, he's probably one of the few SS members who has made the transition to champion of human rights and ethnic dignity, and it's impossible not to think about what a story that transformation would have made.

One thing Annaud and Johnston must have known more about than they put on screen, however, is how living seven years in a deeply religious nation affected Harrer spiritually. Sure, his trials and personal connections make him a nicer guy, but a crucial aspect of his enlightenment seems wholly absent. The film sticks stubbornly to the Western outsider's point of view and rationalist understanding. Maybe that's honest in a way, but it's still a retrograde take on one of the ultimate multicultural experiences.

What we're left to admire is breathtaking mountains, painstaking ethnographic production design, a charismatic Brad Pitt who keeps his German accent pretty consistent and the hope that Martin Scorsese's upcoming movie about the dalai lama, ``Kundun,'' breaks through to deeper truths.

Or, at least, doesn't have as many slow parts.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Seven Years in Tibet'' (PG-13; violence, language).

The stars: Brad Pitt, David Thewlis, Jamyang Jamtsho Wangchuk, B.D. Wong.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. Written by Becky Johnston, based on Heinrich Harrer's book. Produced by Annaud, John H. Williams and Iain Smith. Released by TriStar Pictures.

Running time: Two hours, 11 minutes.

Playing: Century Plaza, Century City; opens citywide Friday.

Our rating: Two and One Half Stars.

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Photo

Photo: The dalai lama (Jamyang Jamtsho Wangchuk) as a young boy is fascinated to meet blond-haired Heinrich Harrer (Brad Pitt) in ``Seven Years in Tibet.''