Movie Review: A village in Bhutan learns about democracy and teaches us, too, in ‘Monk and the Gun’
ABC News
His first film, “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” garnered an Oscar nod
“Why are you teaching us to be so rude?” the elderly village woman asks a Bhutanese election official in “The Monk and the Gun.”
It’s a question both poignant and biting, because the “teaching” this woman is resisting is something much of the outside world considers a basic human right: the right to vote.
For a piercing refresher lesson on democracy, one wouldn’t necessarily think of rural Bhutan as the first place to look. For one thing, democratic elections only came to the tiny, long-isolated Himalayan kingdom in April 2007, when the country held its first mock vote, leading to the real thing late that year and then the first constitution in 2008.
Writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji, whose debut feature, “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” went all the way to an Oscar nomination, centers his delightful, moving and clever new satire on a moment in 2006 when officials first fan out into the countryside to introduce this concept called “election.” TV and internet access are less than a decade old.
It does not go smoothly. “Is that a new pig disease?” asks one villager. Others arrive to register, only to discover they need to know their birthdate. Some do not. They’re told they need to leave and go find out. But really, many don’t see the point. They have a king. They like him. Why go to all this trouble?
