A surprise Oscar nominee in 2022, eventually losing out to Drive My Car in what was a strong foreign-language field, the wistful Bhutanese comedy Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom floats an air of the exotic, but it's actually far more universal in its concerns, and narratively not a million miles away from School of Rock hauled halfway up a mountainside. Protagonist Ugyen (Sherab Dorji) is a slackerish twentysomething city boy with dreams of moving to Australia and starting a new life as a pop idol, but he's stuck teaching on year four of the country's five-year national service program. For his final year, he's transferred to the titular Lunana, a remote community in the hills that, suffice to say, offers neither the travel nor the upward mobility for which he was hoping. It's here, however, that those universal concerns start to kick in. Writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji (no relation to his leading man) is getting at that feeling, far from exclusive to the Bhutanese kingdom, that you aren't where you're supposed to be in life, nor doing what you feel you're supposed to do; yet this universe works in mysterious ways, and sometimes the scenic route is exactly the path we're meant to be on. Following that path yields a film that starts out reassuringly, even pleasurably predictable, and then nuzzles its way somewhere close to your heart.
Here's what I mean by reassuringly predictable. When the guide sent to accompany Ugyen tells him the hike to Lunana involves "a little climb", we know this is comically understated shorthand for an exhausting, days-long yomp. (The gag is nicely set up by an earlier scene in which an exasperated administrator tells our feet-dragging hero his "altitude problems" are, in fact, attitude problems.) While there is some mud to stomp through, the scenery soon neutralises Ugyen's wanderlust; the locals are absolute sweethearts who don't spend all their time whining and texting, unlike some people; and of course there's a demure beauty on hand as a prospective reward once our guy commits to making the sacrifices required of him. One big surprise is that the yak enshrined in the title isn't some coded reference to our shaggy, huffing hero, but an actual yak - a gift from the villagers to honour Ugyen's service. The film's simplicity is its charm, and the simpler it gets (having the snorting yak interrupt a singalong to a local variant on "Old McDonald Had A Farm", say), the more charming it becomes. It's an escape from the wearying complications of ground-level life - framing Lunana almost as a latter-day Shangri-La - though Dorji also gestures in passing at urgent local concerns: receding snow on the mountaintops, an evident lack of teaching resources. By the time Ugyen is introducing his young charges to the concept of teeth-brushing, the film has started to seem like a record of a valuable outreach program - its own form of national service, undertaken by a film crew determined to do good in this world. (Oscar recognition is the least they could have expected.) Lunana is blessed with vistas from which you'd struggle to fashion an ugly-looking film, yes, but it's the people hereabouts who register most forcefully, which is why you may find yourself blinking back tears through the final movement. Lead Dorji makes Ugyen both familiarly brattish and childlike, increasingly open to the possibilities of this world, while the non-professionals found atop this mountain hold the interest and have much to teach us in turn. I learnt two new words - cordyceps (a type of fungus, apparently) and Dzongkha (the official language of Bhutan) - plus how to start a fire with the help of yak dung. How useful this knowledge will prove in my life to come is uncertain, but as this lovely, clarifying film illustrates, every day really can be a school day.
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom is now streaming via the BBC iPlayer, and available to rent via Prime Video, Curzon Home Cinema, YouTube and the Peccadillo Pod.
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