Review of The Monk and the Gun, directed by Pawo Choyning Dorji

I’ll have to admit: Bhutan has been a place that has greatly interested me in the past few years. I don’t know how I first learned about this little Buddhist country, but ever since I first read about it, I knew I wanted to dive deeper into this place. As some very interested in Buddhism, environment, and traditional cultures, it was a country that stuck to all three of these characteristics in a modernizing world.

That said, I was planning a trip to Bhutan if I was going to India around the same time as The Monk and the Gun was starting to gain traction at some film festivals. So I knew about this movie pretty early on!

The only other Bhutanese movie I had seen was from the same director—Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom—and I had enjoyed that movie when I watched it on a flight a while back. I never expected to watch another movie from the country any time soon, as it’s pretty rare to get content from Bhutan around here.

I was on Kanopy when I saw The Monk and the Gun was available to watch, some time after it had made those initial film festival circuits, and I knew I wanted to watch it that same night when I had some free time. So I did! It was an average two hour run time, so I got comfortable under my blankets and turned off all of the lights.

I don’t want to ramble too much in this blog post, so let’s get into the review, shall we?

In 2006, Bhutan prepares for its democratic election as an American enters the country.

There are three different related storylines throughout the course of this movie, so let’s break each of them down.

First, we have the fact it’s 2006 in Bhutan. The country is only just starting to get more technology, as we see from the old school televisions that are present in some of homes of villagers. Politically, something bigger is happening throughout the country: there’s going to be a democratic election.

However, the people of Bhutan don’t know how to participate in democracy, as this is a foreign concept and they don’t really have a ton of access to technology in a widespread manner. So government officials decide they need to take a momentous task: they’re going to go to the people and stage a mock election.

This will serve as a training of sorts so that when the people hear about the real election and the time comes around, they will actually participate and understand what they are in engaging with.

The second storyline begins in the town of Ura, where a Buddhist lama, the elder, tells a young monk named Tashi that they need to prepare for the country to fall apart. Again, this ties in with the elections and everything going on—people don’t know how to handle this.

The lama instructs Tashi to go on a journey to get some guns, as the monastery needs to be able to protect itself when the upheaval of society happens. Guns are technically illegal in Bhutan, so the young monk is taking on such a risky project that could land him in jail.

This intersects with the third story: American Ron Coleman has decided to take a little trip into the country of Bhutan. He’s not coming for sightseeing; he wants to acquire an antique American Civil War rifle that somehow ended up in this country. He hires a local guide (all Americans need a guide to enter Bhutan, even now) to help him out in getting the weapon.

However, this becomes disastrous when the old man selling the rifle, not understanding what it is, decides that he wants to think about giving it to Ron. When they return back to the guy, they learn he has giving it to a Buddhist monk. Turns out the guy didn’t understand Ron was going to give him a lifetime’s worth of money for the rifle, and he knew he wants to help the monastery instead.

That Buddhist monk was Tashi, and now Ron is going to chase after him with his tour guide in order to get the rifle out of Bhutan and into the States. But when the cops get involved, things become even murkier, especially when they have to perform a ritual with the guns.

Overall Thoughts

I really enjoyed this film, and there were some moments I laughed out loud and hard because of the absurdity of the moment. For example, a Buddhist monk going out into Bhutan by foot to acquire an antique Civil War assault rifle is not something I imagined I would watch any time soon, but I am here for it.

It’s an interesting and compelling glimpse into what Bhutan was like during this specific moment of time in Bhutanese history. While the country is still largely undeveloped and looks to remain that way in the near future, there’s definitely more technology advancing there. I do see hits on my blog from Bhutan every so often, which is fascinating to me.

That said, go watch this one if you’re interested in what it has to say and offer. The synopsis is what drew me in, and I ended up loving the movie a lot more than I expected to. It was definitely more up my alley than Lunana, but I know how valuable that movie is in the grand scheme of things, too.

Anyways, go watch it! I saw it on Kanopy, but I’m not sure where else it is available, especially in a global context.

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