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to the film's strategy of amalgamating Buddhist themes with those deriving from two major
cultural components which form the basis of Western perspectives towards individual and
social suffering: Greek mythology and the figure of Christ. The implied cross-references are
arguably intended to suggest why Western society continues to be trapped in existential
unhappiness, and to encourage reflection on the different ways in which Western and Eastern
parts of the world have come to perceive human suffering. The element of Greek myth re-
elaborated in the film concerns Pandora's Box,(l) which tells the story of a woman who (like
Siddhartha) is drawn by her curiosity to disobey an order and open a forbidden box. Her
gesture liberates human sufferings related to old age, poverty, illness, and death that spread
across the world, and it forces her to ease her guilt by spending the rest of her life trying to
alleviate people's pain. In Little Buddha, Siddhartha's desire to look beyond the sanitized
reality established for him by his father is comparable to the opening of Pandora's Box, the
character discovering the sufferings in the same order. But as regards the sequence depicting
death, the camera framing and the close-up of the dead man's feet evokes Andrea Mantegna's
famous painting // Cristo morto / TJie Dead Christ, who is depicted lying on a marble coffin,
his feet positioned towards the forefront of the canvas.
References to Christianity also appear at an earlier stage of the film, when baby
Siddhartha is presented at the age of two already able to speak, as he says 'I have been born
to save all creatures from suffering', which echoes Jesus's words as he declares that he has
been sent into the world to take on his shoulders the original sin of Adam and Eve. The
astronomer who asserts that Siddhartha 'will be the master of the world' resembles the Magi
honouring Jesus as the future 'King of the Kings'. Later, the scene depicting Siddhartha's
renunciation of his regal status draws on St. Francis's life, with the evocative rite of cutting
his hair, and the slowing down of the take is intended to emphasize the gesture's symbolism.
Moreover, the dialogue continues to establish parallels between Buddha and the figure of
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