Soft-launching Democracy in 'The Monk and the Gun'

“People in other countries are willing to kill each other for this right.” 

Take a trip to Bhutan, the country of gross national happiness. In 2006, the mountainous South Asian country began its transition from a constitutional monarchy to a parliamentary one, simply because the king offered. There was no battle, no bloodshed, no bifurcation. The lead-up to this shift marks the context of Pawo Choyning Dorji's 2023 satire, The Monk and the Gun, a film about bestowing political will onto a people who don’t necessarily crave it.

Dorji cast a unique spotlight on his country when his underdog debut Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom received a nomination for Best International Feature at the Academy Awards in 2022, marking the first Bhutanese film to receive the honor. The writer-director-producer’s acclaim then preceded him, adding international appeal to whatever project he next sought to create with his self-founded production company, Dangphu Dingphu. 

Bhutan, with its predominantly agrarian population of under 800,000, is not often given much consideration on the global stage. However, due to slow growth since the pandemic, there has been a recent effort by the government to boost its tourism industry, which it has done by advertising GNH (Gross National Happiness index), a homegrown notion of citizen well-being conceived in the 1970s and then measured for the first time in 2008. Determined by qualitative survey, the index is a challenge to GDP and even HDI, the latter of which Bhutan found itself ranked at 125th out of 192 countries in 2025.

Real national (and globally-ubiquitous) contradictions aside, the film's visuals do a pretty stellar job of making Bhutan seem touristically appealing. More interesting yet is Dorji's multi-layered and relativist approach to its genre. The movie's screening in festivals across the world reflect a warming to concepts that, at the tail end of the Cold War, would’ve made for awkward water cooler chats. I had the same thought when viewing Ajitpal Singh’s Fire in the Mountains, an Indian film set in the Himalayas, which simultaneously necessitates and bashes the imposition of modernity on a remote town. Its protagonist is overwhelmed by the corruption of both her lazy, scientifically dismissive husband and her deceitful, Tiktok-dancing teenage daughter. Neither is in the wrong for their actions, although most would agree the daughter proves slightly more empathetic. 

In the case of The Monk and the Gun, Dorji features multiple Bhutanese protagonists who represent a spectrum of views about the upcoming elections. There is, as the title implies, a monk, alongside his good-natured disciple, whom he instructs to procure for him a gun. It is unclear exactly why – but that is why you will watch the movie.

There is also a family in the village, consisting of a mother, a father and a daughter. The father is wound up because he’s backing a candidate, and that candidate is the rival of his wife’s mother’s preferred politician. His wife, for her part, is largely apolitical. She complains to the team sent to administer the mock elections, which is led by a progressive woman who confidently repeats the quote highlighted at the top of this article. Finally, there is a more urban couple who is entrenched enough in contemporaneity for the husband to assist an American gun fanatic in obtaining an antique rifle from the countryside. 

Sound complicated? It is, a tad, but each narrative intersects into a happy, provincial sort of tale over the two hour runtime. In one of the more on-the-nose scenes, a group of villagers congregate in a restaurant whose owner has purchased the biggest TV the town has ever seen (a CRT box from what appears to be 1990). They catch up on major cultural phenomena, including the moon landing, MTV, and James Bond. One of the protagonists orders a “black water” (Coca-Cola) and joins in on the education. This is modernity: good ol' American pop culture and consumerism.

In another scene, election registrants are turned away because they are unaware of their birthdays. Instead, they estimate the relative season by the invocation of Buddhist folklore or their relationship to the age of the king. Most are altogether disinterested in the election process; when a tractor truck full of people stop to offer the gun-guy’s guide a lift, the driver tells him they are off to a Buddhist ceremony for the full moon, before adding, as an afterthought, “apparently, we also have to vote”. The mock election results indicate remarkable consensus – although on the basis of time-honored national color symbolism, not because of particularly strong convictions about candidate platforms. 

Dorji asks a question seldom posed to highly developed, material cultures: do elections create unnecessary divides? One of the protagonists invokes the comparison of India, whose political environment is rife with rivalries. The election official insists that this choice is a “gift” from the king. The blunt reality is that highly self-sufficient, agrarian societies may not feel the weight of centralized planning choices, because they are largely managing their own affairs. An urban literati may feel disenfranchised by a constitutional monarchy, but not everyone is so involved with their global self-image. A collectivist, peace-honoring culture may not mind keeping to their traditions.

And so it happens that, while one Buddhist devotee totes a massive phallus (read more), the American arrives at the moon ceremony with a bag of AK-47s. He’s not trying to kill anyone – just finalize a trade – but as the true intentions of the monk who sought the gun become clear, so does the Bhutanese perception of the Westerner who wantonly wants. 

Dorji’s film sneaks up on you. You would never expect him to disrespect the piety or placidity of his localized setting, but as the target shifts over the course of the runtime, you do wonder what kind of point he’s trying to make. Marie Holzman penned an article for Le Monde alleging that the film is Chinese-backed anti-democratic propaganda. Sasha B. Chhabra of Commonwealth Magazine makes a hearty argument contesting this claim. The sincerity of any of my conjectures will likely be rendered dubious by accusations of orientalism, so I opt to digress.

Let’s leave it to the filmmaker, then: Dorji studied political science at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. “I combined my experiences at Lawrence, my experiences in a Buddhist monastery in modern India, and I ended up making a film that ties together this philosophy with values of democracy,” he explained to his alma mater’s student publication. In the same interview, he shared the response to the film in Bhutan: “so many people were emotional, they were crying… that is the beauty of art, right? Everyone looks at it and it almost becomes a medium upon which you see a reflection of your own values.”

As an American, I saw a reflection, and challenge, of my own values on the screen. Democracy is a complicated act, and unfortunately for the mediators among us, it usually demands tension. Dorji’s attempts to reconcile the divergence of tradition and modernity, as well as the inclination to outright abstain from the political process, are thoughtful considerations. Even if it doesn't provide the same kind of sizzle we have grown (or groaned) to watch from quick-talking lampooners like Iannucci or McKay, The Monk and the Gun is nonetheless a significant contribution to the typically one-spike world of satire.

The Monk and the Gun is streaming on Mubi.

-Lydia