Is a poster of A bright summer day Pavo Choing Hanging in the Dorji’s house. It is a tribute to the late Edward Yang, but is also more individual. “The little girl in the film,” he says to me, “Chang Chen’s younger sister … that little girl is my wife.”
During our conversation, there is almost some holy in this little intimacy that surprised me. And yet it looks quite suitable. The legacy of the legacy of Taiwanese autor, its emotional patience, and the way he organized memory and modernity in the same breath – all of the cinema’s Ovre felt thoroughly alive.
Still ‘The Monk and the Gun’. Photo Credit: Mubi
It is an inheritance that Pavo bears with grace, if not intentionally. “I never went to the film school,” he says. “I studied political science.” This was exactly the confluence – studying politics in America during the Iraq’s invasion, looking at its motherland, Bhutan, gently enters a democratic infection – which spread deeply into them. “American students will say, it is the duty of America to give democracy to those who do not … the gift of democracy,” he remembers. “I was from a country where we really used to gift democracy. But we did not ask for it. We did not fight for it. There was no revolution, there was no war, and still we were not ready for it. I don’t know that we are ready for it.”
Between the “gift” and cost, between the modernity and the living tradition, the soul is the soul Monk and gunPavo’s latest political satire. On paper, it is a clearly telling about a monk in Bhutan who works to find guns during the country’s first national election. But some crushing insight below the comedic conceit is how the rich nation in an inner life, like Bhutan, risk spiritual forgetting disease in search of ‘rich’ external systems.
“When I premiered the film in Bhutan,” Pavo says, “people were crying. I never expected. I thought I had made a satire. But Bhutani for the audience, it was something else. A person told me,” This reminds us that we have lost anything that we have lost anything. ” Once the audience showed me what the film really meant. ,
However, it is not only the political system of his motherland that interrogates Pavo. He also believes what modernity is doing for her soul. “If you come to Bhutan, Persia is a very important part of our culture,” they say. “We are a tantric Buddhist country, and everything means.” In the tantric idea, prohibition is the ultimate barrier to knowledge, and the solution seems more embarrassed. “If you have water in your ears, a Bhutani will say: Pour more water,” he laughs. “You want to destroy prohibition? Keep yourself in situations where you constantly feel it. You see a Palus, you feel ashamed, you feel ashamed, but that’s fine. Because in fact, in the end, nothing is present.”
Still ‘The Monk and the Gun’. Photo Credit: Mubi
At the end of the film, an American who was looking for a gun leaf with a wooden Palus. “The gun represents some foreigners,” Pavo explains. “Western, modern, but also a bringer of the victim. Phalus, on the other hand, is not an accident. Both are ‘Falik’,” Pavo says with a half-maskan. “Both are masculine. But one represents fear, and the other represents freedom.” More regret, the native of Bhutan is disappearing. “Growing up, they were everywhere. But as we became more modern and western, we started feeling embarrassed by them, and so they disappeared. He was about to help cross what was helping us.”
In Bhutan of Pavo, these symbols are never inactive and ripple at any time personally, politically and spiritually outward. Nevertheless, onscreen is anything to reveal these stories but is comfortable. Bhutani film industry, as he tells me, is newborn, non-existence. Their Oscar-Namshed 2019, Lunana: A Yak in the classroomWas shot with a single camera and no electricity. “It was a solar -powered film,” he says, laughing. “Still, with more recognition, we still truck every piece of equipment from Delhi.”
Nevertheless, Bhutan offers Pavo to stand as a spiritual basis at some other places, even his gaze increases more global. Recently, he contributed to a section Tales of taipeiAn associate Anthology film about life in Taiwan’s capital. “In Bhutan, we roll out of bed at eight o’clock, make coffee, then discuss what to shoot that day. In Taiwan, the crew was on the set at 3 or 4 in the morning. It was quite intense, but was also very professional.” Nevertheless, Taiwan is not a foreign area for Pavo. His wife and children are Taiwan and he calls it another home.
In fact, their entire aesthetics sits at the confluence of the world: East and West, Past and Current, Tradition and Change. He cites Kore-Eida for his realism, Tartino, and, most meaningfully, his own spiritual and creative patron, dzongsar khyentse Norbu. Pavo says, “He was the one who saw that I was a storyteller, before I knew it myself.” “His films are deep, more philosopher, and I once told him that my films would be more than that. And he said,” Okay, if the thing is correct, it works. ” Their frames feel like pictures. Their stories take their time. And his humor comes deeply, like his politics.
Pawo Choyning Dorji behind the screen of ‘The Monk and the Gun’ | Photo Credit: Roadside Attractions
Pavo says to me, “You will never see your own eyelids because they are very close to you” – Some Buddha said once. Thinking explained why his films often turn inward, which is remembered in a simple vision. While the world runs to look out, to look forward, the pavo feels more busy that we have stopped looking closely. Perhaps this is the place where Edward Yang’s spirit is most clearly in his films. To see someone’s own culture, to question it, to question it without cruelty, and to hold its contradictions and non -equality with care.
To see clearly. Even in particular, when it is your own eyelids on the way.
Monk and gun are currently available to stream on Mubi
Published – July 30, 2025 07:23 PM IST
