MONK AND THE GUN, THE
(director/writer: Pawo Choyning Dorji; cinematographer: Jigme Tenzing; editor: Hsiao-Yun Ku; music: Frederic Alvarez; cast: Tandin Wangchuk (Tashi), Deki Lhamo (Tshomo), Pema Zangmo Sherpa (Tshering Yangden), Kelsang Choejay (lama), Tandim Sonam (Benji), Harry Einhorn (Ronald Coleman); Runtime: 107; MPAA Rating: PG-13; producers: Pawo Choyning Dorji, Feng Hsu, Stephanie Lai; Roadside Attractions; 2023-Bhutan/France/USA/Taiwan-in Dzongkha and English, with English subtitles)
“Visually enticing.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Bhutan residing filmmaker, once a student at the University of Wisconsin, Pawo Choyning Dorji (“Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom”/”Tales of Taipei”), offers a visually enticing (showing off the natural beauty of Bhutan’s Himalayan Mountains), wry comedic film set in the Bhutan of 2006-2008. The country is experiencing its first democratic parliamentary elections, as the king gives up his throne in 2008 and modern technology, like the internet and television, become for the first time incorporated into the backward country.
Bhutan is depicted as the world’s last Shanghai-La.
But the film is stuck with a wooden script and a droll dialogue as it critiques in a quiet way Western politics as being influenced by power trips, even as it welcomes democracy to Bhutan as a positive.
Its main story features a shifty-eyed American Civil War gun dealer and relic collector, Ronald Coleman (Harry Einhorn), named like the star of Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon (1937), a Shangrai-La adventure tale. Ronnie is coming to Bhutan during this volatile period of change to see if he can buy from a monk (Kelsang Choejay) a valuable Civil War rifle. But he runs into difficulty making the purchase from the seller, even as he’s helped in the negotiation by another Bhutanese monk (Tandim Sonam). The seller says he will make the deal only if he gets in the swap a modern weapon of destruction, like an AK47 or two, which he sees after watching the latest James Bond thriller on TV. We later learn the gun possessing lama (a real lama) wishes to use the weapons in a religious ceremony.
As the government teaches its people how to vote in a mock rehearsal before the real election, we also witness the bizarre religious Full Moon ceremony that requires a gun when performed.
The main actors deliver lively performances, as do the actors in the supporting roles–from the monk played by Tandin Wang (a famous Bhutanese singer), and the solid performances by Deki Lhamo as a local villager and Pema Zangmo Sherpa as an election supervisor.
It played at the Toronto Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 7/18/2024 GRADE: B