Works almost like a satirical comedy, this pleasant sophomore feature from the ‘Lunana’ director explores the Bhutanese way of life in light of the country’s modernisation of culture and politics.
Review #2,712
Dir. Pawo Choyning Dorji
2023 | Bhutan | Drama | 107 min | 2.39:1 | Dzongkha & English
Not rated – likely to be PG13
Cast: Tandin Wangchuk, Deki Lhamo, Pema Zangmo Sherpa
Plot: The Kingdom of Bhutan is to become a democracy and holds a mock election as a training exercise. In the town of Ura, an old lama orders a monk to get a gun to face the imminent change in the kingdom. Meanwhile, an American collector is in search of a valuable gun that falls in the lama’s hands.
Awards: Official Selection (Toronto)
International Sales: Films Boutique
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Democracy; Religion & Politics; Modernisation
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Slightly Arthouse
Viewed: Screener
Spoilers: No
Much like The Cup (1999) by Bhutanese director Khyentse Norbu, which is about the intersection between modernity and religion as football fever grips the people from a monastery, The Monk and the Gun is also about technology seeping into the daily lives of the Bhutanese.
In a shop selling drinks, many sit silently, completely transfixed by Daniel Craig wielding a weapon in Quantum of Solace (2008). A television set is crucial in both instances, whether it is to watch the FIFA World Cup or a Hollywood blockbuster.
In The Monk and the Gun, emerging director Pawo Choyning Dorji (of 2019’s Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom) isn’t only fascinated by the technological (and hence cultural) impact Western media has on his country, but also Western politics entering the fray, where the idealism of democracy firmly arrives in Bhutan.
With the King abdicating and allowing the people to vote for a new way forward for the country, the villagers become lost and confused.
Dorji’s sophomore feature works almost like a satirical comedy—it is indeed amusing at times as the people ‘learn’ how to vote.
“People need to be taught how to vote?”
But more intriguingly, as promised by its title, the film has a driving narrative about a monk who wants a gun, while a visiting American also wants the same gun, which happens to be a relic from the American Civil War.
So, religion, politics and technology all converge but Dorji’s approach isn’t an outwardly provocative one insofar as the film isn’t an aggressively pointed sociopolitical commentary on Western ‘influences’.
Instead, it’s all a rather pleasant affair but with truths about the world peppered throughout, be it America’s unhealthy obsession with the 2nd Amendment or the assumption that democracy is a one-size-fits-all solution.
While it isn’t as emotionally stirring as Lunana, The Monk and the Gun suggests a potentially novel path forward that Dorji is carving out for Bhutanese cinema.
Grade: B+
Trailer:
Eternality Tan 
[…] no secret that I love Bhutanese cinema after programming Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2019) and The Monk and the Gun (2023) for the Singapore Film Society. Here’s another on my radar called Agent of Happiness, […]
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