Watching Burma VJ and looking back at 2007 from 2014, not such a great distance when all is said and done, you can’t help but wonder, again, how the monks of the saffron uprising became the monks of 969. In the movie everything looks so straightforward – get rid of the military junta and life in Myanmar will be good. Even when deeper thought – then, not just now – unearthed major challenges certain to stand in the way of political reform, it was hard to imagine monks taking the lead in a movement as chauvinistic and repugnant as 969. “Monks are not supposed to do political things,” says Joshua as narrator of the film. “But when the people are suffering and starving, sometimes they rise to give their support.” Today, though, Buddhist political engagement is aggressive, domineering and channeling – leading the people in ways that are hard to square with that statement. We thus need to know a lot more about politics inside Myanmar’s monasteries – something, fortunately, that Matt Walton is working on.