 back to Think Tech, I'm Jay Fidel. This is movies you can learn from. And we have a very interesting movie. It was nominated for an Oscar. And it's a movie you haven't seen before. And it's called Lunana, the yak in the classroom. How about that? George Casey and I are going to review that today. And it's very different from really any movie we've looked at before. Welcome, George. Thank you, Jay. Yeah, welcome. Thank you. Why don't you lay out the environment for this movie? Environment is a carefully selected word. Basically, this movie is filmed in the country of Bhutan, both in the capital where this young school teacher was raised and went to school to become a teacher. And in this community called Lunana, which is way up in the Himalayas, it's in the mountains. There's no road that goes there, right? You have to trek over streams and whatever. It's only accessible for six months of the year when the winter comes, the snows, they're blocked in for the winter. Okay. So I'll give a little background. This young student, his parents had died when he was very young and his grandmother raised him. And she wanted to get him a career that he could survive on. So she went to have him train as a teacher. He trained as a teacher. And then he signed a contract with the Bhutanese government to teach five years. And after the fourth year, he was really unhappy. He didn't really want to be a teacher because in the schools in the capital, food, right? So he goes, he wants to quit, right? Break his contract. And he wants to go to Australia and become a singer. He's a good singer. He has his guitar, right? So he meets with a supervisor, a hiring supervisor. And she's very upset with him. She says, you know, she says to him, I've never seen a student, a teacher as unenthusiastic as you about teaching, right? And then she gives him this assignment, this the fifth year in Lunana, which is this isolated remote village. And he says, oh no, the altitude, it bothers me. And she says, no, it's your attitude. It's not an altitude problem. It's an attitude problem. They speak, I mean, English is universal language all over. So a lot of this is in their local, something with a D language, you know, a lot of it's in English. So you can still have subtitles. So this is basically, and then he has to go to that village. So he goes up to that village, and it's unbelievable to get there. I mean, bus and then, and then you yak and then, and then, and then the end, they have to stay in tents to get to the village. There's no place there. There's one halfway house on the way from the main from the one of the ganja, which is a bigger, bigger village. And then, and then there's a halfway house in the middle of nowhere. And then it's all tents. So he finally gets his feeder. He's got regular shoes on his feet are all wet because the shoes that he bought in, in thin food, they said, Oh, it's waterproof, not waterproof, when you're swimming in puddles and lakes and rivers, you know, so basically he gets there. And immediately he tells the, the, the, the village head, you know, I really don't want to be here. I want to go back. But they needed about three days to get him back. And in that time, this young little girl, young woman, kid, you know, she's so brilliant. And she's a local. She's not a trained actress. She comes up to him and she says, Oh, we really wanted you. We really, we're waiting for you. So he sort of has a change of heart and he decides he'll stay the winter, you know, because his, his papers for Australia haven't come through yet. So he figures he'll stay the winter. So he stays the winter and he does a good job, you know, because he has none of the amenities he had in thin food. He has no blackboard. You can see the classroom is all filthy from the winter, you know, the dust and everything. So he's got to clean it up and he does this and he gets it. He gets some of his friends in the capital of him to send him some supplies for the kids. So he becomes a good and these kids just love him. They're totally immersed with him, right? And then at the end of the winter, you can get into a little more what happens on the different episodes. And then he finally gets to Australia. And I won't hit say what's going on, but when he gets to Australia, that's a very emphatic, profound ending to this movie. So you can fill in a little more, Jay, to this. There's other players, there's this young woman, obviously she's got to crush on him, you know, she's a local woman, and she's a yak herder. And she basically brings a yak to him into the classroom because the yaks are yak milk, the yak hair, the yak meat. And also the dung is how they keep warm. They fire that deck. There's nothing else to keep, you know, can't light a fire. And that's their existence up there. They're literally in symbiosis with the yak. The yak is their survival mechanism without the yak. And they bring the yak in the classroom because they want to keep the yak warm. And then the yak's there in the classroom as he's teaching. And it's really symbolic too that the yak is so central to their existence. I mean, each of us, we think of ourselves in our current environment, right? But we don't understand that in parts of the world, the whole environment gravitates around one animal, and that's the yak. So I'll let you fill in a lot of things on this, but that's the basis of this. And then we'll get into the nitty gritty of what lessons are being taught in this movie, profound. Okay. Yeah, that was a terrific summary, George. You're really getting good at this. Well, I loved this movie. I loved it because of the way the director caught the relationships between this young man and these kids who were a challenge for him at first. But he, they liked him, he liked them, and they bonded up like forever. He was the best teacher they had ever had, and they all loved each other. And life in that classroom was in heaven, literally. And he taught them stuff, and they learned stuff, and they were, they cared deeply about him, and he cared deeply about them, and he would do anything for them. And the strange thing about it, you know, you've described his ultimate goal of going back to Sydney and playing a guitar and a bar, it all seems kind of trite compared with the experience he had in Lunana. Why would he leave Lunana and go to a bar in Sydney and play the guitar for guys drinking beer, really? What a mistake that was. And that's what I got out of it. It was a mistake. He made a profound error with his life. That young girl who taught him how to sing, she taught him her special song. They sat and looked over this fantastic landscape, looking into the mountains. It was unbelievable. I mean, the camera work on this and the, you know, the production values were extraordinary. And they sit together and they overlooked this mountain scenery, and they sing her special song. And obviously, she likes him, and he likes her. And there's this moment when he's leaving again, because he's driven to go back to Sydney, foolish boy. And, you know, and they say farewell, and you really wonder, why are they saying farewell? They obviously like each other. She's very pretty. But, you know, she lives in a small mountain town and in the middle of nowhere. And I guess he just couldn't, he couldn't make peace with that. Well, but she's a major character in this, in this movie. Keldon, the actress is Sheldon. They're all, you know, she's, you know, I think she's an adequacy up, but, you know, or she might be a local, you know, I didn't, but the little girl is definitely a local. But, you know, one of the things she does tell him that she doesn't even want to live in the capital thin crew. So if they're going to have a relationship, he's got to, he's got to stay in that community. Right. That's what she was saying. And that's what he was entertaining. Maybe he never really committed to it. But that's what, that's what you, as the member of the audience, were entertaining. Maybe the guy would stay there. Because this was Shangri-La. This was as close as you get in the world today to Shangri-La, heaven on earth. Exactly. This town where, you know, and first of all, I have to start with Bhutan. Bhutan, they say, is the happiest place on earth. The people are happy. And you can see that in the movie, their relationships and their, you know, general attitude. They had, you know, no, no negatives at all. They all loved each other. The old and the young, you know, the girls and the boys, the parents, everybody. And it reminds me of a short story, which I'll take a moment and tell you, you know, there's the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Waikiki. And they bring in people from all over Asia and they, and they put them up in hotel rooms in, you know, Waikiki and everything. And, you know, the Chinese are, they're fretful. They're hard to deal with. They're kind of retentive. And the Bhutanese are fun. They make jokes. The Bhutanese are always happy. So I was really amazed at what happens when you put a Chinese guy, really stiff, you know, trained in the army or whatever. Okay. Together with a Bhutanese guy. And living in a small condo in Waikiki. Well, the Bhutanese guy was ruining the show. He was so funny and he's always making fun of a Chinese guy. And the two of them got over the several weeks of this program. They got to be lifelong buddies, even though the Chinese guy didn't make friends very easily. Because the Bhutanese guy was so much fun. And they are fun. And they're kind and gentle and honest. And, you know, great, great culture, great culture. So, you know, I think that's a big part of it. And he learns, our teacher, he learns that he immerses himself in that. He immerses himself in the simple life, if you will, where for paper, the windows of his little classroom, in which he slept, by the way, lest we forget, were made out of some kind of parchment or something. And the kids had no paper. So he took the windows, his own windows down, and he gave them the windows to use as paper. That's an example of where we are on this. And he, you know, he made, he actually created a blackboard out of wood. He had some of the elders in the village to give him some wood. And they painted it with some black charcoal paint. And he got some chalk. And now you have a blackboard. So all these things were so simple, so basic. So what's the word? Fundamental human experience is what it was. And, you know, I'm afraid, I criticize the character because I don't think he understood the fabulous experience that life had given him on top of the mountain with these kids and the young girl and the elders who liked him a lot. And it was, you know, to me it was a big mistake that he left. But let me, let me go to something else, why this movie is so interesting to me, why it was and increasingly is interesting to me. There was, there was no war. There was no news of war. There was really no connection with the outside. They lived in exquisite peace and harmony every day. They, you know, they were spending their time alive on the planet in a way that we should, we should all envy, you know. And I must say that it was a relief to get away from the news about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which we've talked about, and the horrible massacre in Israel and, and all the trouble in the Middle East and riots and crowds and the United States where our democracy is frankly, in my opinion, falling apart. They didn't have anything like that. This movie had nothing like that. And it was, it was a relief to get away from that. I turned off cable news. This was much better than cable news. This was a tonic figure sold this movie. Yes. Visibly. I mean, you knew while you were watching the movie that this was a relief from the ordinary stress and strain of, you know, finding out what's going on in our perverse world these days. So that's why this movie teaches you something. If you look at the reviews, they were really good reviews on this movie. It would have, it would have gotten an Oscar except that the government of Bhutan had some bureaucratic problem and they handed it in late. So it never got submitted on time. That's why they didn't get her, you know, an Oscar. But, but let me say though that this movie was different than anything else that you and I have reviewed. This movie seemed at first pretty simple, but it wasn't simple. This movie seemed to, you know, you had to reach for a lesson as you and I always do out of this movie. But after a while, you realize the lesson was right there. The reviewers all said that the heart of the movie is that the simple life is best. But I think that's an understatement. I think that's, it goes further than that. This is humanity at its best. And you want to go there although I'm afraid I don't think I can handle the altitude. The altitude of that village was 11,000 feet, 3,500 meters. And, you know, it's probably tough to live there. But everybody was happy there. A PS, by the way, one of those school children, one of the actresses, the actress, those five or six year old school children who you love so much, died after the movie was made. It was made a couple of years ago, I think. She died of leukemia, which is really sad because all those kids were so beautiful with wide-eyed kids, like out of a keen painting, you know, wide-eyed, willing to learn anything, you know, sucking up knowledge from these young teachers, you know, finding everything that he had to offer. So it's, yes, it's a simple movie. It teaches you simplicity. It teaches you that the simple life is better. But, you know, that's not a simple lesson. This movie teaches you way beyond that. And you say to yourself, gee, why can't the rest of the world be just like Lunana? You know, he had not gone to Australia previously because he had that pamphlet showing Australia that he carried around with him. And, you know, a lot of young people, I have local friends here in Hawaii that at a young age, in their 20s, they born and raised here, they go up and they go to Vegas, they go to California, they go to the mainland. Sometimes they get stuck over there for school or for a job, but then they always realize that the end of the rainbow, it's not so perfect over there on the mainland, and they come back, right? And maybe get a lesser job, you know? Like, I left my great job on the mainland, and I'm not even a local person. I'm from, you know, East Coast originally, but, and then came here, you know, and because even with the economic negatives, you know, here, it's a very, it's a more peaceful, it's like a, in Hawaiian, I forget, it's like a sanctuary about against the craziness in the world. And this lunana was like a sanctuary, but at the end of the movie, as you alluded to, he sort of has a change of heart, and you can talk about this too, because he's in that bar, and he's singing, and nobody's looking at him, they're drinking, they're talking to their friends, and he's singing his heart out, right? They don't even look at him. So all of a sudden he stops, right? And, you know, he stops singing, right? And he starts to think for a minute, and the owner says, hey, again, you know, I pay you to sing, right? Sing. And he starts to sing the song that that young woman, so, so done, taught him up in the hills, about the yaks and their life up there, right? So it's sort of like he's having a change of heart, you know, after going, after getting his dream was to go to Australia, right? And then he comes, goes to Australia, and then sort of has a change in heart. Maybe that wasn't better, because those kids were totally dedicated toward him, they're looking at him, they're counting on him, and these people in the bar don't even know he exists, you know? It's background music. So that's pretty much the profound lesson, and that's how the movie ends. Sort of leaves you hanging. Does he decide to go back then? Because during the winter, there's no school up there anyhow. So maybe he decides to go back, you know? Because he was needed, he was loved, you know? And in Sydney, Australia, ignoring him. You know, not to say that eventually he may make a success because he was a really good singer. So you could add to that a little, Jay, and you've already filled it a lot. You know, that was very touching, you know, when he was playing, I don't know, bar music with his guitar, and he was okay. I mean, I don't think he was a brilliant musician. He was more a brilliant teacher, actually. And so when the proprietor tells him, keep singing, and he sings the mountain song, it's very touching. It's an emotional moment at the end of that movie. And it brings the whole thing into focus, you know? What is it really about for him? And I guess I would ask you, you know, living in that world, the world of that character, the world of that village, the world of that schoolhouse, did he go back? Would he go back? Do you think he did go back as a, you know? And this is not a true movie, but it's taken from stories that people have brought out of Bhutan. So it's a true environment is what it is. And his relationship with it was well portrayed. But I would say that that moment in the bar was a critical moment for him. And I think maybe the realization came to him that the simple life on top of the mountain with the music and with the music and the young woman and the kids and all that, were the best thing he could do in life. The problem is, you don't recognize that when you're young. You can write as those kids that go to Las Vegas, they're in for a thrill. When you're a little older, maybe you recognize it and you appreciate it. And maybe, maybe he was going through that kind of transition and the bar and the people in the bar, the proprietors and all that were, you know, teaching him something. But, you know, the movie doesn't move that fast. You have to watch for the detail. It's almost like it gets by you. You know, you don't spot these critical things that happen, these lessons that he learns and the children learn and how life is in this very simple world. And you say, I think I have to go back and look at it again. I have to immerse myself in this simple world. As I said, it's almost like you become part of it. It's a keyhole into this little village. And you're with him. You are him. You relate to this character. You say, I could do that. I'd like to do that. I like to be surrounded with these beautiful, beautiful children. I'd like to have them admire me the way these children admired him. And so, it's the simplicity that's so captivating. Precisely. Really, really amazing. Sort of an emotional thing, Ty, you know, if you get emotionally tied to the children, you get emotionally tied to the whole circumstance of him teaching up there and that symbiotic relationship he has with the kids, right? And then it keeps coming to my mind, the symbiotic relationship they had with nature, I mean, to survive up there, you've got to be in tune with the natural environment. That's the way our ancestors lived millennia ago with the natural environment before we had technology or farming, basic farming. So it's just, it really hit me like it did you emotionally. This movie was, you know, because I'm also trained as a school teacher, you know, Master's history teacher. Why am I not surprised? Let me say this, George, this is really interesting. In the reviews I read, one of them talked about something that you and I have not discussed here yet. And that is that how can this beautiful life, this pearl, this gem at the top of the mountains continue in a world of chaos, you know, in every direction around, you know. I mean, right now the Chinese are fighting with the Indians in the Himalayas. You know, we hear news about that every few months about this diffused border they have that top the mountains. And so, you know, the world is in chaos in so many ways. So much hotspots, so much violence, so much irrationality, so much craziness, you know, and a lack of caring about fellow human beings. It's awful what's happening. I am sorry that we have this, but we have it. So here's this mountaintop place where these people are like angels, you know. They're completely unspoiled. And in the review, and I didn't see this in the movie, maybe it wasn't in the movie, but there was a comment about a cell phone tower, a cell phone tower, that they were building a cell phone tower near this village. And now all of a sudden things were going to change. Now there were going to be cell phones and now they're going to be in touch with the world. And they could, you know, I mean, it's good if somebody gets sick, you know, call for help, whatnot. It's just some problem in the village, you know, call for help and talk to your family and friends elsewhere, whatnot, get the news. I mean, all of that. But the cell phone tower is an intrusion, you know, into the paradise of this village. And so that's, we should cover that George because this is like Shangri-La, ephemeral. There is this huge threat of a world gone mad, and not too far away. It's a huge threat of these people in their, in their paradise, losing their paradise. It's coming soon. So you cannot assume, and maybe he knew this, maybe the teacher knew this. You cannot assume it was going to stay like this. Rather, you have to assume that there will be an incursion of technology of, you know, a more uncaring society, coming from Bhutan or Tibet or India or any of the countries around there, coming from business, coming from government, coming from the military. You know, China is right there. And maybe China has plans on Bhutan, the way it has plans on everything. So I think we have to factor that in, don't you? Oh, yeah. And Asha, the village leader, he was talking about that these kids should not be only yak herders and mushroom. I forgot some kind of mushroom gatherers, that they should have the ability to do other things in the world. And that basically means that they're going to leave this pristine village and go to the capital or go somewhere else in the world. So even the village leaders encouraging, you know, change. And with this cell phone tower, as you alluded to, to a change everything. And then that way of life up there is going to change. You know, just I've been here like, I don't know, 30 years and Hawaii is completely different. We had all the little mom and pop stores, everything you got the big box now, the world with the internet is totally different today, you know, but we're instantly in touch with all the troubles of the world, which you have to be on our shoulders, you know, what's going on, we see all this gore and horrible things going on, people getting killed, boats flit, whatever that we never really had that kind of instant, you know, thing before that we can see. So yes, what you're saying, their way of life is changing the minute that, you know, just like in the Brazilian Amazon, right, those people as civilization comes changes everything. So very profound movie. I mean, I would say that I should watch this a few more times because it really hit home. As you said, it really was emotionally to me, it really hit home. Well, there's a certain sadness in it when you realize that these kids, you know, they're going to grow up, what are they growing up into? They're growing up into the destruction of their culture. They're growing up into being, you know, having to leave the, the mountain top community. You cannot imagine it lasting all that long. And that's why the movie is, it is, it's pristine, because you look through the keyhole and you see it in great detail, great cinematography. You see the way people live, you have a, it's, it's, you see their daily lives, you see, these are real people, they're not actors, they're not actors, real people. And this is the way they live, this is their village. And so you say, I, I have the, you know, the advantage of looking in through, into the keyhole and seeing it as it exists today. It may not exist that much longer, but it's a joy to, to see it and see the way they are today. And that's why the movie is, is so touching. So what do we know? You know, we're near the end, we have to rate this J, because it's like, it's time to rate. I give this a 10 plus, you know, it, and the director, producer, they really understood that village because they're from Bhutan, you know, and, and, and then his name is also Dorje, just like the main actors, sure, I'm Dorje, last name, the producer, director is also Dorje, his last name. And he understands all this. So he presented this so realistically from an, as an insider. So as you said, the, the filming is beautiful. And you know, they had a lot of troubles. They, if it doesn't rain, it snows. So they had to play with, with generators and stuff to film this. This was not an easy movie to film. So it was really difficult for them to do that because at times they had difficulty even with sun or, or, you know, lighting and whatever. So really good. Everything, production value, scenery, acting, even though some of it was just natural, was great. And sure, up Dorje, the main actor was, he's a sort of a actor and a singer, you know, but he's Bhutanese. He's Bhutanese. He's a vocal. Yeah. So I'll give it a 10 plus. So I'll leave it to you, Jay, to give your rating. Yeah, I would also give it a 10 plus. I really, I love this movie. I want more of it, but I know that there'll be less of it going forward. I like movies that are international, but I love movies that show me things and teach me things that I had no idea about. And you, I give you credit for being able to pronounce their names. Those names, you know, of the people, the names in the movie, completely unpronounceable. And what's what I found interesting is that, you know, Bhutan is made of villages like this. They speak in Bhutan 22 languages, 22. They're, you know, one village then another village and so forth. It's really a study for a linguist. And that includes, you know, roots of Tibetan and Nepalese and Chinese and Indian. I mean, they're sort of, anybody in the Himalayas has got all these influences and that has influenced their language. But I don't think I could ever learn the language that they were speaking in this movie. I'm doing this for you that you can pronounce the names. Sometime I'll explain to you my own ethnicity history with China influence, Himalayan Indian influence, intermarriage that nobody knows, you know, there's a lot of still growth stuff that sort of gotten lost in the, what are they called, the somethings of time, you know, annals of time over the over the centuries of millennia that I will get into that sometime. It's really okay, but not we're not going to do that now because we're out of time. Not now. And I really enjoyed hearing your, you know, summary of this and your comments about it, George. And I think it does really reflect the two of us. We have the sensibility to appreciate this movie and to see it for a little piece of Shangri-La. Thank you so much. Your sentiments to Jay really were profound. Thank you as well. Thank you. Movies you can learn from here on Think Tech. Aloha.