Thimphu boasts a single movie theater, showing one movie at a time. Sometimes it is a Hindi film, otherwise it is a Bhutanese film in Dzongka. The current Bhutanese show, Kikhor ("Fate") had such an enticing hand-painted banner, as seen in the picture, that we thought it would be fun to go. We saw the huge lines to get in on the weekend, so we chose a Tuesday night and headed downtown to the cinema an hour and fifteen minutes before start time. Tickets are sold from a wooden table set up on the porch of the cinema, also hawking CDs and cassette tapes of the soundtrack. The ticket seller had a seating chart of the theater and he was X-ing off the seats as they were purchased. Each ticket was marked with the seat row and number, and had the name of the film printed on it. "Starts at six-thirty sharp," he told us, and though it was barely 5:15, most of the theater was black X-ed out already. Seats cost 80 Nu (aboutt $2), 60 Nu ($1.50) or 40 Nu ($1) depending on where you sit. All the 80 and 60 Nu seats were gone, so we bought 40 Nu tickets for 6 seats in a row (since why would we want to pay twice as much for a film we weren't going to understand anyway?) and pocketed them while we walked around for an hour killing time and buying snacks to take into the movie. We also asked a few people on the porch what the general plotline of the film was, so we might have a rough clue, since it was not subtitled, but no one was very forthcoming.
At 6:00 we filed in to the theater to take our seats. The entrance was an extremely narrow door, where the usher took a flashlight to our stack of tickets and waved us down front. 80 Nu seats are in the balcony, 60 Nu in the back of the floor, and 40 Nu in the front 10 or 12 rows. The seats were painted wooden benches, with small posts between each seat, and the seat number written in black marker on the back. The interior might have appeared spacious if it were not so dimly lit and dirty. At the front was a cement stage, with a gigantic painted white wall, framed by black curtains. The theater was obviously going to be full, and the several ceiling fans in the back weren't doing much to relieve the oppressive closeness of the room. We counted exits, and there seemed to be five, with wooden doors, so it made us feel a little better that we wouldn't have to crush through the tiny front door if there was a panic in the theater. We disaster-obsessed Americans have to think about these things, you know.
We sat in front of a group of teenaged boys, and although they had not seen it before, they were eager to make conversation, touch Halle's hair, and agreed to help us understand the dialogue. As the seats filled up there was some negotiation between the ushers and people trying to get better seats, and we soon figured out that one ticket meant one seat, but as many people as you could fit into that seat. We put 6 people in 5 seats, but in front of us were 14 people in 7 seats, ranging in age from grandma to infant tied onto her mother's back. By the time the lights dimmed even further and the digital projector set onto the balcony railing started up, the theater was packed with what we estimated were probably a thousand people. And yes, we were the only Caucasians in the whole place, which seemed to amuse the people sitting around us.
I am going to ruin the plot for you, so if you plan to see Kikhor in Bhutan and you want to be surprised, stop reading now. The acting was decent, but the production was sort of amateur-video level, and the sound was really choppy, with ambient sounds closer to the microphone coming out very loudly. There was background music composed on synthesizer, and there were three or four music-video-type musical interludes in which the actors lip-synched the songs as a part of the storyline (hence the CDs for sale). The main characters were a close-knit prosperous family from the town of Paro (even the kids recognized the many Paro landmarks): a mother, father, two grown sons, a grown daughter, and a cook and housekeeper who seemed well-integrated into the family business. The cook, apparently, was played by a Bhutanese comedian whom the teenagers recognized, and the audience roared with laughter every time he spoke; he seemed to have the punchline of many of the family scenes. A scene of him cutting white radish in the kitchen was a spoof of "The Good, The Bad & the Ugly" right down to the music. The conflict was centered between the noble, reserved older brother and the somewhat rash, reckless and better-looking younger brother. Older brother, in buff physical condition, beats up a gang of pool-playing hoods who had attacked younger brother (in these carefuly staged fight sequences, the best part of the punch-throwing or bad-guy hurling action was repeated two or three times in slow motion for our further enjoyment). Older brother wanted to get married, and had even seen a girl in town that he liked, but was too shy or polite to speak to her; he only watched her from a distance. Younger brother, meanwhile, without knowing older brother had designs on her, also met the girl, whose name was Tsering, asked her out, and started courting her. No one in the family finds out that they are interested in the same girl until he brings her home to meet his parents, whereupon everyone is very upset but hides it from younger brother so not to ruin his happiness. Older brother sucks it up nobly and drowns his sorrows in beer; he even unselfishly sings a tribute song at younger brother's wedding.
Then the plot thickens... older brother wakes up with blood on his pillow and is diagnosed with leukemia ("blood cancer," explain the young men behind us), but again for some reason the family keeps this knowledge from younger brother. When Tsering gets in an accident and needs a blood transfusion, older brother refuses younger brother's request to donate blood and younger brother flies into a rage and storms out of the house. He ignores older brother on the street when they meet, and refuses to defend older brother in a pool-hall fight in which older brother is so badly injured that he dies in the hospital. Only then does sister spill the family secrets to younger brother, showing him proof of the older brother's admiration for Tsering, and telling him the real reason he wouldn't give blood. Stricken with remorse, younger brother rushes to the hospital bedside, just in time to see older brother dribble his last bit of blood from his mouth and croak. Younger brother and Tsering name their first son after older brother, in a "four years later" epilogue.
The audience seemed to enjoy this production very much; there was a lot of laughing, some applause here and there, and some discussion about the unfolding plot. Babies were crying, people climbed over each other to get in and out of the rows, everyone was packed in tightly, and it got extremely hot and stuffy over the two and a half hours. Luckily they opened all exits at the end, as Thompson was feeling a little green and needed some fresh air, and the theater emptied quickly out into the cool night. We snapped one photo of the theater as people were leaving, but it doesn't really convey the closeness and size of the crowd.
You should have seen us talking to people outside the theater, trying to fill in the gaps in our understanding of the plot. We even asked our taxi driver if he had seen it (he had), and got a few more details from him about the storyline. He was the one who translated the title for us, as "fate," which makes sense. The next time you are looking for local entertainment in Thimphu, I recommend the 40 Nu seats, especially if you have helpful schoolboys behind you to interpret.
