In Pawo Choyning Dorji’s film, a teacher is assigned to a school that’s an eight-day walk from where he lives.
In “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” an indifferent young teacher, Ugyen, is assigned to a school high in the mountains of Bhutan. This is far from where he’d rather be — Australia — and it’s an eight-day schlep by foot from where he currently lives, the modern Bhutanese city of Thimphu. As Ugyen makes the trek with two guides, the director, Pawo Choyning Dorji, shows the declining population and rising altitude along the way. Lunana numbers less than 100 residents.
Ugyen’s charming, yak-herding hosts are an internet-free picture of serenity against the backdrop of verdant, misty slopes. Parables about teachers sent to the provinces are usually a two-way street: education and advancement for the students, life lessons for their instructor. Ugyen (plainly played by Sherab Dorji) is especially undistinguished, and despite teaching the children about math and toothbrushes, he receives the brunt of the story’s enlightenment about the upsides of traditional living.
The gently efficient story feels like an attempt to illustrate Bhutan’s real-life “Gross National Happiness” initiative. (The film gives credit to “the noble people of Lunana,” as well as “School Among Glaciers,” a 2003 Bhutanese documentary about a teacher sent to the mountains.) Ugyen’s aspirations to a singing career are amusingly unremarkable in Lunana, where locals croon songs to the valleys as spiritual offerings.
About that yak: he’s a gift to Ugyen (to produce dung fuel), and he sits and chews in the background of classroom scenes, just happy to be there. The film basks in a similar mood of mild-mannered contentment.
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom
Not rated. In Dzongkha, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
