Producers: Jean-Christophe Simon, Hsu Feng, Stephanie Lai and Pawo Choyning Dorji  Director: Pawo Choyning Dorji   Screenplay: Pawo Choyning Dorji  Cast: Tandin Wangchuk, Deki Lhamo, Pema Zangmo Sherpa, Tandin Sonam, Harry Einhorn, Kelsang Choejay, Choeying Jatsho, Tandin Phubz and Yuphel Lhendup Selden   Distributor: Roadside Attractions

Grade: B

There’s something Ealingesque about Pawo Choyning Dorji’s second feature, despite its being set in Bhutan, about as far away from England as you can get.  “The Monk and the Gun” is also set in 2006, when the Himalayan country was preparing for its first democratic elections, necessitated by King Jigme Singye Wangchuk’s decision to turn over his absolute power to a council of state and a national assembly.  The process included a mock election to educate the populace in the process before the actual election of representatives in 2008. 

Dorji’s screenplay is constructed around several interlocking plot threads.  One focuses on Tshering Yangden (Pema Zangmo Sherpa), a government official charged, along with her aide Phurba (Tandin Phubz) with preparing for the mock election in the village of Ura, where Choephil (Choeying Jatsho) has become so aggressive in support of one candidate that it has affected the relationship of his wife Tshomo (Deki Lhamo) with her mother, who supports the rival candidate. He has also made things difficult for his daughter Yuphel (Yuphel Lhendup Selden), who’s bullied by her cousins at school because of her father’s stand.   

Another follows Benji (Tandin Sonam), a urban man with an ill wife, who has made arrangements to lead American gun collector Ronald Coleman (Harry Einhorn)—the character’s name obvious a cheeky reference to the actor who played Robert Conway, the British diplomat accidentally taken to the timelessly idyllic Shangri-La in Frank Capra’s 1937 of James Hilton’s “Lost Horizon”—to a rare rifle, an antique from the American Civil War kept as a sacred relic of a war with Tibet by a Buddhist monk.

A third thread, which gives the film its title, centers on the region’s revered Lama (Kelsang Choejay), whose constant prayer and meditation in a tiny temple is credited with the peace and harmony of the district.  He instructs his young attendant Tashi (Tandin Wangchuk) to bring him two guns by the day of the Full Moon, on which the mock election will occur, in order, he says, to “set things right.”  Tashi obediently goes off to fulfill his duty, though guns are extremely rare in Bhutan, except for the revolvers policemen carry.

What the Lama’s intentions might be is left hanging until the film’s final act, by which time the various plot elements have become intertwined.  Benji and Coleman make a deal with the monk to purchase the gun—though at a lower price than they’ve offered, which the monk considers too much—but before they can get the cash together, Tashi has arrived, and the monk gives him the firearm out of respect for the Lama.  When they then try to purchase it from the young monk, he requires two AK47s, which he’s just seen in a James Bond movie on a television in a store he visits during his wandering, in return, which sends them to an arms dealer who can acquire them from India.  Meanwhile Tshomo and Yuphel visit Yangden in search of an eraser which the girl needs for school but her father has failed to provide due to his electioneering.  When the various threads finally come together, the mock election turns out fine in terms of organization, but the result is lopsided for reasons that should have been foreseen.

Leisurely and humane, the film is filled with wry observations and gentle satire about how the move to democracy, and the opening of the country to outside influences (television and the internet are new and amazing—even the cola Tashi calls “black water” is a recent arrival) will change Bhutan (one elderly woman criticizes the electoral process for causing people to be rude to one another, while a man dismisses the election officials’ requirement for his precise birthdate, which he doesn’t know, with a muttered complaint about such useless information) will inevitably change Bhutan, as well as the difficulty Westerners have in understanding the Bhutanese mentality. (Coleman is genuinely bewildered by what the Bhutanese consider important, and equally nonplussed when asked by a man to explain freedom and democracy, coming as he does from “the land of Lincoln and JFK.”)  When the reason behind the Lama’s desire for the guns is revealed, it’s utterly consistent with the goals of peace and harmony he’s looked upon as ensuring for the community, and totally at odds with Western expectations.

The film is lovely to look at, with cinematographer Jigme Tenzing and production designer Chungdra Gyeltshen making use of the Bhutanese locations to create wide-screen images that, with repeated visuals of the lushly colored fields through which Tashi journeys, create a bucolic atmosphere. Nonetheless the effects of incipient modernization are demonstrated in the urban scenes and even in village sequences where things like television are beginning to take over people’s time. The unhurried pacing of Dorji and editor Hsiao-Yun Ku, along with Frederic Alvarez’s score, adds to the mood of a traditional society just beginning to feel the effects of a transformation that will inevitably bring greater change, for good and ill.

With performances, many from non-professionals, that are direct and unaffected, “The Monk and the Gun” genially but incisively portrays a society in transition and, through Coleman’s character, the attitude of an outside world that can’t quite comprehend its peculiar culture but is destined to play a significant role in its future.   

Producers: Paul Garnes and Ava DuVernay   Director: Ava DuVernay   Screenplay: Ava DuVernay   Cast: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Niecy Nash-Betts, Vera Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Nick Offerman, Blair Underwood, Connie Nielsen, Emily Yancy, Jasmine Cephas-Jones, Finn Wittock, Victoria Pedretti, Isha Blaaker, Myles Frost, Daniel Lommatzsch, Lennox Sims, Allan Wilayto, Gaurav J. Pathania, Suraj Yengde, Dhrubo Jyoti, Matthew Zuk and Hannah Pniewski Distributor: Neon

Grade: B

In making a film inspired by Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” Ava DuVernay (“Selma”) has attempted something ambitious: dramatizing the author’s development of her thesis within a biographical framework that depicts Wilkerson’s experience as an African-American woman within a society infused with racism and as an individual touched by domestic tragedy.  “Origin” thus becomes both a film of ideas and a portrait of the personal journey that gave rise to them.  If it doesn’t manage entirely to overcome the obstacles in joining all the elements smoothly, sometimes falling into didacticism and near melodrama, its aspirations remain admirable, and its impact considerable.

It also boasts powerful performances by a strong ensemble cast.  Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor anchors the picture as Wilkerson, whose crushing losses—the deaths of her husband Brett Hamilton (Jon Bernthal, genially supportive), mother Ruby (Emily Yancy, endearingly spunky) and cousin (Niecy Nash-Betts, charmingly approachable)—combine with her horrified reaction to the killing of Treyvon Martin (Myles Frost) by self-appointed vigilante George Zimmerman—and lead her to think about American racism in more universal terms.  She develops the argument that American discrimination against Blacks is an instance of a global embrace of caste systems that one can perceive in Nazi anti-Semitism and in the Indian hierarchy that places the Dalits, formerly called Untouchables, at the lowest level.  All, she contends, represent a process of dehumanization driven by a desire, or need, to dominate. 

She develops the thesis by visits to Germany and India designed to educate herself about the comparisons she’s drawing.  In each case DuVernay integrates historical reenactments to illustrate how Wilkerson reaches her conclusions.  In the case of Germany, she learns from visits to libraries and museums, as well as conversations with her hosts, about book-burnings and meetings among Nazi officials like Josef Goebbels (Daniel Lommatzsch) who describe Jim Crow laws as exemplars the regime can follow in developing its own discriminatory measures.  But DuVernay also includes more intimate lessons, such as the story of August Landmesser (Finn Wittock), whose romance with Irma Eckler (Victoria Pedretti) led him to protest the regime by refusing to give the obligatory Hitler salute, resulting in his imprisonment (she, of course, was murdered along with millions of her fellow Jews); she also relates the experience of academics Allison and Elizabeth Davis (Isha Blaaker and Jasmine Cephas-Jones), a black couple who, after visiting Germany after Hitler’s rise to power, retuned home and joined with a white couple, Burleigh and Mary Gardner (Matthew Zuk and Hannah Pniewski) to investigate the Jim Crow system in the American South.

The Indian segment concentrates on the career of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (Gaurav J. Pathania), who oversaw the drafting of the Indian Constitution following independence and was so strong an opponent of the concept and practice of Untouchability that even today, statues of him have to be protected by cages to prevent vandalism.  Here much of the information is simply related by Suraj Yengde and Dhrubo Jyoti, who act as Wilkerson’s tour guides, as it were.

Then there is the American material which, in addition to reenactments of the Martin killing and lynchings, includes sequences portraying Wilkerson’s own interactions with family as well as friends like her editor (Blair Underwood).  But it too adds other intimate scenes, like one in which an acquaintance named Miss Hale (Audra McDonald) relates the impact an encounter with a hostile school principal who could not accept that “Miss” was actually her name had on her, and a reenactment of a devastating episode that actually occurred in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1951: Al Bright (Lennox Sims), the only Black member of a champion Little League squad brought to a local pool for a post-game celebration, was forbidden to swim with his teammates because of the park’s segregationist policies. The sad compromise, dramatized as it’s related by one of the boy’s surviving teammates (Allan Wilayto) to Wilkerson, is positively heartbreaking. 

The treatment does not always avoid heavy-handedness: If Lincoln spoke of a house divided, for example, here the deterioration of Wilkerson’s home, which she prepares to sell after Brett’s death, is employed as a metaphor for the structural weaknesses of a society undermined by racism when Wilkerson converses with a plumber (Nick Offerman) wearing a MAGA hat.  But one is willing to overlook such overreach when the film is so clearly heartfelt.  And DuVernay does include possible objections to Wilkerson’s overarching idea—in the sequence set in Germany, for instance, a woman named Sabine (Connie Nielsen) points out that the analogy the author is crafting fails because slavery involved subjugation for economic motives, while the Nazi Final Solution was aimed at extermination, very different motivations—an observation perhaps too quickly dismissed here.   

One can argue that DuVernay tries to cram too much into the picture, and note that while perfectly competent from a visual perspective, the craft contributions—production design (Ina Mayhew), costumes (Dominique Dawson) and cinematography (Matthew J. Lloyd)–are more adequate than exceptional.  Spencer Averick’s editing can’t always avoid some jarring transitions, and Kris Bowers’ score isn’t particularly memorable.

But while “Origin” is in some respects an ungainly film, even if you question Wilkerson’s conclusions, it, like her book, encourages you to ponder them, and to appreciate the commitment that the author brought to her work.