Welcome to my 2026 project honoring the first quarter of the 21st century. In this extremely lax project I watch a movie from each year to hopefully give myself some insight with what has changed within cinema during this century. At the very least I’ll have watched 25 interesting films and paired them with a dinner inspired by the movie, the place its from, and maybe a little bit of nostalgia for the past 25 years. You can watch along with me or find out what’s up next by checking out the full list of movies.

Today’s feature is from the year 2023, we are headed to the Bhutan to buy a gun in…

Movie: The Monk and the Gun
Year: 2023
Director: Pawo Choyning Dorji
Country: Bhutan
The Elevator Pitch: On the eve of the first Bhutanese election Tashi, a young monk, is tasked with finding a gun by his lama. Only problem is that Tashi has never seen a gun.

How Was the Movie?:  

I adored this movie. There is a tension in this movie that might have come from me simply being an outsider to Bhutan and the culture there that I just enjoyed so much. The movie threads a lot of stories together that give a very interesting shape of Bhutan, a country I really didn’t know much about except that you had to pay per day to visit it.

The movie is set in 2006 during a very interesting period for the country after the former King had abdicated in lieu of the country moving towards an election. We’re able to peak into the windows of several characters as they deal with what that means for them and the social order including officials who are teaching people how to elect someone, politically motivated families, children, and the religious order in the small town of Ura.

The movie deftly follows these characters as well as a savvy tour guide and an American as they weave through the countryside of Bhutan literally looking for a symbol of war during a peaceful transition into a new social order.

I think movies like this can run the risk of people living in the countryside look like a desolate backwards place, especially of a country without internet in 2006 but the movie deftly avoids these and plays the audiences expectations against themselves by centering the stories of several different types of conflicts present in Bhutanese society between government and the people, women and men, politician and peasants, and of course the past and future.

To me the most interesting character in the film is not the monk but the high powered electioneer who comes from the big city to try and teach the people in the town how to vote and oversee the election. Despite the American’s fish out of water or the monk who set off on a task he does not know how to complete, she seems to be the one most at odds with the culture of the countryside.

The movie ends perfectly and is just extremely satisfying from start to end I would recommend it to anyone who wants an enjoyable, thoughtful evening.

What was for Dinner?: 

For dinner we had Kewa Datchi which literally means “potatoes and cheese”. The dish does what it says on the tin and is thinly sliced potatoes that are boiled with chilies and onions and then once they’re cooked you place cheese in the dish to melt it. 

While I can’t get traditional Bhutanese chilies, traditionally called “Ema” which is cute because that means mother in Estonian, I am able to get some chilies locally that vary in the amount of heat they have so I went a little conservative with them and unfortunately got back a kind of bland dish.

I’m sure I’ve made this wrong somehow or I didn’t use a flavorful enough cheese or just the right chilies will make the dish pop because this is often served to foreigners and is a favorite in Bhutan because of its simple, delicious and not too spicy nature. However I truly found this bland and a little boring. It’s one of the few dishes that we not only had leftovers from (despite not making a lot of it) but also I had to force myself to eat them the next day instead of wanting to eat them.

I think this is about on par with the Icelandic fish cream dish, plokkfiskur, it’s totally fine but I’m not clamoring for more.

That’s it for 2023, see you in the future year of 2024!