CW: discussions of misogynist violence and sexual assault
Directorial debuts excite me as a fan of film. I’m so thrilled to see an artist step onto the stage and share their cinematic vision.
A few incredible directorial debuts in recent years have been Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Dave Egger’s The Witch, and Kelly Fremon Craig’s The Edge of Seventeen. Each of these great films used elements of their respective genres and built upon these features to present interesting, compelling works. I love genre movies, and I love how these filmmakers have illustrated that genre provides limitless possibilities.
I feel very similarly about Dev Patel’s phenomenal directorial debut Monkey Man (story by Patel, screenplay by Patel and Paul Angunawela and John Collee). The film is fresh, bold, exciting, surprising. It’s an action movie with so much to say.
I’ll begin my discussion praising the filmmaking craft on display here. This is so well done for a first feature. The editing is exciting and keeps the audience members on their toes, jumping between past and present, memory and imagination. During the fight scenes, the editing is much faster, cutting to different angles of the skirmish with the ferocity of each blow of the fist or knife. The sets are diverse and create immersion, from crowded city streets to sanctuaries in the wilderness to glitzy high rises. The costumes, likewise, are varied and add to the immersion. Characters wear festive attire during Diwali, sweat-drenched torn clothing in underground fight clubs, and a variety of uniforms. We see so much and experience so much in the film.
I mentioned the editing in the fight scenes. On that note, the fight choreography is incredible. I felt the impact of every blow, the weight and heft of the bodies colliding, the force each combatant used to try to overpower their opponent. I credit this to the phenomenal sound design and stunt work. Every hit rings in the ears. Often in action films, fast editing is used to hide the lack of stunts and provide the illusion of movement. This isn’t the case in Monkey Man. So many strikes and blows are shown in frame even with the quick cuts. This creates an adrenaline pumping experience.
Beyond the thrills of the film, the story is compelling and contains powerful themes. The opening scene is a tender memory of the protagonist learning from his mother the story of the Hindu deity Hanuman. He is walking in the wilderness with his mother, and the scene is intercut with illustrations from the picture book of Hanuman she narrates. This is one of many tender, heartfelt scenes in the movie. It is also one of many scenes that poignantly draw from Hinduism. These quieter moments add weight and gravitas to the riveting action sequences.
There is immense pleasure in the well-executed spectacle of an action film. The amazing first installment of John Wick is a prime example of this. In Monkey Man, a character who sells the protagonist, referred to in the credits as Kid, a gun to be used in a revenge plan even makes a reference to John Wick. No doubt, Dev Patel is acknowledging the influence of John Wick on Monkey Man, with both films being frenetic, brutal action films about a main character seeking revenge. However, as much as I love the first John Wick, I feel that it is light on plot. Monkey Man is a film with deeper ideas and themes, and for those reasons, it surpasses the first John Wick, in my view.
The rest of this discussion involves major plot spoilers. If you haven’t watched Monkey Man, I highly recommend seeing it without spoilers.
Perhaps subconsciously, perhaps deliberately, Monkey Man illustrates how it surpasses the influence of John Wick when Kid’s initial revenge plan involving the gun fails. After his failure and brush with death, Kid goes on a personal journey before he succeeds in his goal.
Kid is seeking revenge against the people responsible for his mother’s death. The man who killed his mother in front of him when he was a little boy is Rana Singh (Sikandar Kher), a police chief. Rana killed her as part of a land-grab operation in which the people of the village in which Kid grew up were driven from their land and murdered if they did not leave. The operation was ordered by Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande), a man who has constructed the public persona of a pious religious leader but who is really a brutal and unrelenting capitalist.
I give a shout out to my brother for drawing attention to an integral scene when he and I were discussing the film. About halfway through the movie, Baba Shakti is giving a speech at a rally for a political candidate he supports in an upcoming national election in India. The candidate’s party is nationalist. Baba Shakti declares that India is a mother that has been hurt and who must be protected and healed. He asserts that his favored candidate and the candidate’s party will be able to do just that, to restore their mother country. The speech is intercut with news footage of violence against women and other marginalized groups. The footage seemed so real, I couldn’t tell if Patel used actual news footage from our world.
This scene is rightfully disturbing. Violence against women and other marginalized groups is a very real crisis in South Asia. The scene in this movie illustrates the empty rhetoric of nationalism, an exclusionary ideology that often constructs the nation as a mother or as the motherland. This commitment to protecting the motherland, itself a disturbing agenda because nationalism conceives of the nation as an exclusive group and allows violence against those deemed as not belonging to the nation, is totally empty when women are subjected to misogynist violence within the constructed nation. Nationalism and misogyny often go hand-in-hand, both being violent and exclusionary ideologies. The film absolutely condemns both.
The contrast between the rhetoric of the speech and the terrible reality isn’t the only instance in the film in which a false presentation masks atrocities. Rana Singh is a frequent client at a high end brothel, which Kid infiltrates during his first unsuccessful revenge plan involving the purchased gun. The brothel outwardly has the appearance of an elite restaurant, with stylish decor and waiters dressed in expensive suits. This glitzy exterior masks the horrible fact that the brothel’s workers are victims of human trafficking, taken from their homes in India and nearby countries. This brothel is the setting of the film’s finale, too, when Baba Shakti, Rana Singh, and their favored candidate are celebrating their victory in the election. Again, their lies are illustrated clearly; they claim to want to restore the country while exploiting the women in the country.
Kid, therefore, isn’t just fighting individuals. He is also fighting powerful people who perpetuate deeply violent and exclusionary systems that are entrenched through the force of capitalism. What is he supposed to do? How does a nationalistic, misogynist system crumble?
The film suggests that, in order for these exclusionary systems to dissolve, that which has been excluded must be welcomed in. The systems cannot be dismantled merely from the inside. After Kid’s failed attempt to kill Rana, he is on the brink of death. He is saved and restored to health by a community of hijras, who themselves are persecuted because they do not fit within the rigid man-woman binary that patriarchal nationalism reifies. This community of hijras preserves a temple in the wilderness that houses a shrine to Ardhanarishvara, a form of the deity Shiva that combines him with his consort Parvati. One half of the figure in the shrine is masculine, one half is feminine. The leader of the community, Alpha (Vipin Sharma), explains to Kid that the masculine enacts destruction, while the feminine enacts creation, and both are necessary for lasting change.
Importantly, destruction isn’t necessarily violent. Kid undergoes his own personal journey of destruction and creation. For the destruction, he lets down the walls that have repressed his memories of his mother’s death. He experiences it fully through memory, grieves, and accepts that he did as much as he could have to save her. For creation, Kid integrates his feminine side more actively into his being. As a viewer, I believe that this integration could have gone further; however, it does happen, as signaled by multiple scenes. First, Kid restores his body by training at the temple. As he punches a punching bag, a drummer who in an earlier scene presented one of his drums as feminine and one as masculine to play out a conversation plays on the drums again. Kid punches the bag to the rhythm of both the masculine and feminine drums. Furthermore, in his failed revenge plan, he used a gun, a phallic symbol. During his second attempt to infiltrate the brothel and kill Rana and Baba Shakti, he arms himself with knives. Usually, knives are also considered phallic symbols, but in the context of this film, the knives connect Kid with his mother; the knife was the weapon she used to try to defend herself before she was killed. Furthermore, when the community of hijras who tended to Kid break into the brothel to fight off the guards while he pursues Rana and Baba Shakti, the hijras’ weapons of choice are also knives. The fact that the hijras join the fight is another illustration of how exclusionary systems must be dismantled through the very people who have been excluded. Finally, when Kid finally kills Rana, he uses a woman’s high-heeled shoe as a weapon.
Again, I think the integration of masculine and feminine in Kid could have gone further. I think the film perhaps acknowledges that Kid is indeed an imperfect hero. He succeeds in his quest to kill Rana and Baba Shakti, but there is so much more work to be done. Yes, he destroyed one brothel, killed one corrupt police chief, and killed one brutal capitalist presenting himself as a religious leader. Yet, there are so many others like them, and there will be so many more. Furthermore, Kid’s quest has been brutal and bloody. I’d argue that his violence was necessary. I do believe that violence should always be an absolute final resort, but that some systems are so deeply entrenched and powerful that violence is necessary to dismantle them. As I mentioned in my discussion from last week when I brought up the actual United States Civil War, the institution of chattel slavery was so deeply entrenched and powerful through capital. If those who benefited from that system would not voluntarily dismantle it, which they did not, then a violent overthrow was necessary. So, Kid’s violence was necessary; but, he carried out the destruction, not the creation, in his plan. What comes next? What will be rebuilt in the rubble of what he has destroyed?
The film doesn’t answer such questions. In the film’s final scene, Kid, deeply wounded, sees his mother as he slumps to the floor; I believe this is meant to indicate that he succumbs to his wounds and joins his mother in the afterlife. Therefore, the film ends not on a note of triumph, but on a note of sadness, perhaps even tragedy. He succeeds, but does not live long enough to do the necessary work of what comes next.
This film deals with vital themes. Even if it doesn’t handle them perfectly, I admire Dev Patel’s commitment to addressing these themes. This is an admirable film on a technical level and a storytelling level. I want to watch it again, and I’m excited to see what Patel does next.
I love your thoughtful critique of the masculine/feminine elements. I hadn't considered this when I saw it but it is obvious patriarchal ideas are present in this regime and that it extinguishes ideas of nurturing and love, the symbol of a mother. I also really loved that the end fight included the hijras, which further drove the point that this fight was not just revenge but something on which hope and change could be built.
Intriguing movie review. Excellent job!!