The Monk and the Gun
With his Oscar nominated debut film Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, director Pawo Choyning Dorji took the world by storm. The Monk and the Gun is set in 2006, a year of political turmoil as Bhutan moves towards becoming the youngest democracy on Earth. Shot beautifully by cinematographer Jigme Tenzing, this ensemble comedy looks at how mock elections impact on a monk, a rural family, an election official and a city slicker with dangerous connections whose lives intersect in small and large ways.
Upon hearing about mock elections over the radio, an old lama (Kelsang Choejey) from a small village called Ura asks his attendant Tashi (Tandin Wangchuck) to bring him two guns before the full moon which coincides with election day so they can “set it right.” What he means by that cryptic statement remains unknown until the end of this sweet little film.
Meanwhile Tashi wanders around looking for guns; election officer Tshering (Pema Zangmo Sherpa) arrives, watching as they teach the rural population how to vote. They set up fictional parties: blue stands for freedom and equality; red stands for industrial development; yellow stands for preservation. Although villagers are told to vote for whichever party they think will “bring them most happiness” according to democracy which Tshering insists is necessary for Gross National Happiness they are also taught how to hold rallies. Villagers are arbitrarily separated into groups and told to shout at each other. An old woman pulls up alongside Tshering after one such lesson and asks why they are being encouraged to be rude: “This isn’t who we are.”
Indeed much of this film criticises ways in which political parties polarise families. Helping out Tshering is local woman Tshomo (Deki Lhamo), whose own family has been torn apart by the election. Her husband Choephel (Choeying Jatsho) and her mother now refuse to speak because they support different parties.
When their daughter Yuphel (Yuphel Lhendup Selden, giving a charmingly unaffected performance in her acting debut) asks her father for an eraser she needs for school, he tells her he’s thinking about the election now so she can be Prime Minister later. “I don’t want to be Prime Minister,” she tells him, “I just want my eraser.” Choephel is so caught up in what alignment with a politician can do for his family down the line from getting his daughter into a city school to buying them a bigger television that he fails to address their more immediate needs.
The film is also scathing about media (particularly television) and its influence on Bhutan’s future. In 2006 less than ten years had passed since TV and internet were allowed after being banned by the country, this had opened up a two-way connection between their traditional way of life and the outside world. Mock elections are being covered by CNN, BBC, etc, putting pressure on people like Tshering who often seem more concerned with how this fledgling democracy will appear to global eyes than what it actually means for voters.
The only programmes any civilian seems to watch on TV are either campaign ads or American pop culture.
In one of the most entertaining parts of the movie, Tashi goes to a far off store for a drink (he gets “black water,” which is Coca Cola) and then joins a group huddled around their TV. They start watching footage from the moon landing Neil Armstrong says “one small step for mankind” but slowly it becomes clear that they’re actually watching MTV’s logo, which transitions into a commercial for “Quantum of Solace,” a James Bond movie starring Daniel Craig. The rest of the world might be sick of 007, but in Bhutan he’s still everywhere, this is also true of AK-47s and other guns associated with Bond.
Eventually Tashi finds an old rifle owned by a farmer who lives way out in the middle of nowhere. It’s from the American Civil War and somehow ended up killing a lot of Tibetans in Bhutan. What Tashi doesn’t know is that this rare artifact is also being pursued by an unsavory American collector named Mr. Ron (Harry Einhorn), whose guide is Benji (Tandin Sonam), an urbanite who hopes to make enough money off his commission to help his sick wife even if it means going to jail. Life in the city any city presents its own unique challenges.
Ronald Coleman, the American character’s full name is a direct tribute to Ronald Colman, the actor in Frank Capra’s classic fantasy “Lost Horizon.” In that 1937 film, an envoy’s airplane crashes in the Himalayas and he discovers a timeless city, Shangri La. Even after its transition to democracy, Bhutan is often still described by Western media with reference to this movie: “the world’s last Shangri-La.”
Mr. Ron represents America his guns obsession, impatience; belief that any problem can be solved by throwing money at it and anyone bought off; refusal to play along with these things on the part of a rural Bhutanese farmer, whose every confounding act is motivated not by profit but kindness. Later when an election official, excited to meet an American for the first time, wants to talk about democracy with him, Mr. Ron brushes him off unwilling or unable really to engage.
Dorji threads these storylines together à la Altman characters passing through each other’s lives almost unknowingly sometimes; not all given equal screen time but all necessary for Dorji’s mosaic of life in Bhutan. And like “Nashville,” which it also resembles somewhat thematically (or is it just because they’re both movies about countries?), many scenes are set against wide shots of the Bhutanese countryside: Tashi here centered within one such bucolic tableau of flowers and animals held harmoniously together in Dorji’s frame.
They converge eventually at the village stupa, which the lama says represents Buddha’s enlightened mind. Located in middle of field between mountains and village sacred space/place of ceremony and change/transition where travelers like Tashi might come to center themselves either after long journey or before setting out on another leg thereof country itself too must find its center now during this phase between old ways and new as it marches ever forward into modernity (or whatever).
For many people around the world, a thing’s worth is measured in the price people are willing to pay for it, be that cash like what Mr. Ron offers up as a bribe for Tashi’s gun or lives lost in countries where democracy had to be fought for and hard won. But in a place whose supreme goal is its citizens’ happiness, Dorji asks here with “The Monk and the Gun” whether complete modernization of his country is worth this very happiness.
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