Monkey Man: A Review
An allegorical thriller with an entertaining buffet of characters, incisive sociopolitical relevance, and a politics of destruction
If you haven’t yet seen this movie, you may want to, though I won’t spoil too much. If you don’t care about spoilers, I still encourage you to watch some trailers or debriefs.
When I was in elementary school, I was often teased for eating yogurt rice for lunch. Not in a cruel way mind you, but more in a, “Why are you eating a giant container of cottage cheese? Wait, that’s not cottage cheese? It’s what now?!” sort of way. I am not going gripe about being culturally mistreated, because that would be a gross over-exaggeration. I would be lying, though, if I said there weren’t many moments where I'd wished my peers were more educated on the great epics of Bharat that colored my upbringing.
What is wild is that barely 20 years later, a John Wick-style movie lionizing the mythos of Hanuman is grossing upward of $4M in American theaters. Granted, the main character is a cutie, which certainly factors into its financial success.
Still, until Dev Patel showed up, the only other Hindustani artifact that punched significant weight in mainstream America was a Disneyfied version of a 19th-century collection of short stories written by an Anglican satrap in Mumbai (please do not interpret this as my denigrating Rudyard Kipling; Jungle Book is a picturesque masterpiece). There are many tongue-in-cheek jokes about how Indians are the new Jews – taking over Hollywood and IT – and for better or for worse, a box office success from such a scrappy effort proves these accusations accurate.
I am not a big sucker for bloody revenge fantasies, but, overall, Monkey Man was an enjoyable watch. It will not go down in history as technically earth-shattering or philosophically paradigm-shifting. The plot and sequencing is a bit bland, if not cheesy. The shaky camerawork during some of the fight scenes is positively horrible. Nevertheless, the film has the mark of a director-and-lead-actor starting to come powerfully into his own creative voice. As someone barely three years younger, attempting to step into my own craftsmanship, I am watching this process unfold with deep respect.
I am always interested in diving into the interpersonal psychology of a story’s characters, and as a subject of study, Monkey Man does not disappoint. For such a short thriller (total runtime is less than two hours), a lot of relational depth is packed into an equally modern and mystical arena.
The Kid / “Bobby”
Dev makes a cool cinematic choice to tie his character’s arc to that of Hanuman’s, given his character’s tragic backstory in which his hands get severely burned. Although the Ramayana is often known by name, and the Hanuman Chalisa is chanted by millions of Indians regularly, Hanuman is a lesser-known deity within Western consciousness.
To my pleasure, Americans are being offered a direct route to imbibe subtler elements of the Hindu pantheon. Moreover, the way many Indians are viewed in the West – docile, quiescent, cunning – stands in steep contrast to the archetype of Hanuman – brave, courageous, strong, vigorous. It is as if just a couple years later, Mowgli went through unbelievable trauma, and came out the other side as a reactionary Hyperborean beast to reclaim the purity and protect the innocence of his tribe.
The class of farmers is always a safe symbol of working people’s humility and resilience: small-town simpletons possess dirty bodies and mannerisms, but more than make up for their limited means with a richness of heart and soulful connection to nature. Additionally, the maneuver to fuse a 21st-century screenplay with the legend of Hanuman weaves in a type of legitimacy that appeals to the martial sympathies of white Europeans.
At a time when technological forces across the world seem to be erasing spiritual rootedness, many are looking to cultivate a bodybuilder aesthetic to confront decay. The movie’s mythical groundwork buys into this movement with a unique Desi flavor. Indeed, “the kid” is a gentleman in the streets and an animal in the sheets boxing ring. (Why does every broken man decide that the best way to handle internal anguish is to lift heavy and become a combat sports champion?)
The Kid even follows in the footsteps of the online culture war by coming up with a pseudonym (“Bobby”) when interfacing with polite society. In contrast to the famous European übermensch whose name is stamped across history books, this young man – whose jungle aesthetic remains humble and folkish underneath his protective wrath – chooses a throwaway name. Furthermore, no different than your average ‘frog groyper’ with 353 followers, he derives a sense of identity from being a lone ranger whose role is to bring down a sclerotic, unjust empire.
Guru Baba Shakti
If there is any clear commentary to take away from this movie, it is that the director hates the BJP. From the beginning, he drives home who “The Sovereign Party” represents in real life. The producer does not withhold presenting this organization as a corrupt political machine bent on building an exclusionary central authority. I can’t say it is a surprise to see a wealthy cosmopolitan actor-director and his biracial producer denigrate a political party that stands for religious and ethnic nationalism; nor is it surprising they go so far as to label this coalition as “Ravana and his army.”
However, to say that the right-wingers are the story’s only enemy is reductive. There are, in fact, many enemies that coexist: a constellation of political blocs, each of which imposes their unique sins on society. In this way, it is more so that the shortcomings of the right-wing are made the most explicit; their role as the antagonist is overt.
Fascinatingly, the nexus of evil within this BJP-mirror does not seem to be located within the Office of The Prime Minister. In fact, the prime minister character only shows up on the screen a handful of times. Both his name and dialogue are forgettable. Instead, the prime minister’s guru Baba Shakti takes center stage. This provides the viewer with an interesting conundrum to ponder: does this guru represent the real-world prime minister, or is his character a symbol of someone – or something – else?
Baba Shakti is a primitive yogi who, out of nowhere, has built an enormous cult-like following, by promising to restore beauty and truth to his civilization. And, so, what nightmares does he foist onto the citizens? His shady personality suggests that the sin of the right wing is unabashedly expropriating the theogenic elements of their people for their own comfort, while in actuality opposing the survival needs of those same people they claim to protect.
As if there were not enough proof that “art does not imitate life, but life imitates art”, Donald Trump has apparently begun to sell personally-branded Bibles that include the Pledge of Allegiance and Bill of Rights.
Democracy’s Shadow
In the age of global democracy, heads of state hold relatively little power. Instead, political programs are engineered and endorsed by a cadre of private elites that pull the strings of bureaucracy behind closed doors, and only use the head of state to launder consent for such programs. This is especially true in India’s case, as its constitution outlines a non-monarchical parliamentary system.
In our world, the BJP – and Modi, specifically – does have a somewhat inimical relationship with India’s largest voting block – farmers – originating in economic concerns. The decision to ban ₹500, ₹1000, and ₹2000 notes was intended to curb the circulation of dark money and tighten the money supply; while it is still unclear whether this outcome was achieved, it did seem to adversely affect cashflow within working and agricultural classes, at least for a time.
On the other hand, it is unfair to portray the man as someone who has only inflamed social tensions. A supermajority of Muslims feel positively toward the new Rama temple constructed in Ayodhya. Indeed, even though he continues to ratchet up a robust Hindutva ethos, Modi has given plenty of ovation to religious minorities, including Christians.
The reality, given the governmental structures at play, is that Modi himself is involved very little in the day-to-day administration of his nation, and cannot be blamed for the plethora of outcomes he is supposedly responsible for, only the cultural messaging that he ties to such outcomes.
It is for this reason that Baba Shakti himself is identified as a primary villain (i.e., Ravana), and not the prime minister who relies on him for theocratic prestige. His guruship is a representation of this shadow dynamic within democracy manifested into a concrete personage. But if he is only the faithful face of villainy, then the real antagonists must be located below this surface.
Baba Shakti’s head of security, who just happens to also be the city’s chief of police, is a prime candidate.
Chief Rana Singh
It is unclear whether The Kid opposes the police as an institution, which is a staunchly anarchist position, or if his animosity is directed squarely at the illegitimate regime that Chief Rana Singh upholds (and represents in his eyes), which is a much more revanchist attitude.
It is one matter for a guru to fraudulently claim to epitomize a new era of harmony and goodness. It is another matter entirely for this guru to colonize your land to build a commune for his devotees as a means of exemplifying this claim. It is a nail-in-the-coffin for the chief of police to accede to these colonization orders without a hint of hesitation or remorse. If you are a man of faith, the destruction of your family under these circumstances is injurious in a way that cannot be rectified by taking a higher, divine perspective.
Part of what makes childhood trauma so difficult to untangle is that the (1) larger context and incentive structure of general oppressive authority gets mixed in with (2) the personal damage caused during critical formative moments. In many cases, it is ultimately impossible to separate the objective dynamics of abuse from the subjective experience of victimhood.
Regardless, what is clear is that in order to stand up for what is lost, The Kid must face up and integrate the part of himself that mirrors the compulsion toward oppression that plagues his primary adversary. Until he stops viewing pain as something to block out, he can only run away; once he internalizes his pain as a fact, he runs toward his mission to avenge his tribe’s annihilation.
It is worth noting that for the bulk of The Kid’s traumatic flashbacks, Chief Singh’s face does not appear, but his name tag and the black ring he wears on his hand do. The ring of power is a common motif in literature, and the presence of this motif and its binding to a specific name more precisely indicates the source of existential brutality – at least within the main character’s perception.
Obviously, a village boy cannot casually arrange a confrontation with law enforcement’s head honcho. Because of this, The Kid has to turn to indirect means before he can orchestrate a proper showdown.
Queenie Kapoor
In 2019, Joe Rogan interviewed Jack Dorsey, and Twitter’s then-legal counsel Vijaya Gadde accompanied him. Her demeanor cemented in American minds the archetype of the overbearing female Indian micromanager – one that populates numerous corporate boardrooms. In this movie, she appears as Queenie Kapoor, a ruthless hotel magnate.
If Chief Singh occupies the violent, masculine pole of authoritarianism, then Queenie occupies the managerial, feminine pole. The symbol of the gold crown on her business card and luxury hotel betrays a self-proclaimed entitlement; that she deserves to be at the helm of society’s political economy (does this remind you of anyone else within American electoral politics? 😏). I mean, for ****’* sake, her name is Queenie – that can’t possibly be her birth name, right?!
Despite his inherent talent and drive, The Kid is forced to take on the most debasing jobs within the hotel, unable to speak a single word against a supervisor who relishes holding power over him, taking solace only in the silent plotting of his retribution.
Furthermore, it is only through Queenie’s commitment to reputational and commercial largesse, that all the other tyrannical systems at play continue to function. Every crooked chief requires a palace filled with cocaine, caviar, and concubines. She is only too happy to coordinate the penthouse parties where cops can blow off steam and make nefarious backroom deals.
Queenie is the portrait of a capital-intensive, market liberalism that has gone badly astray. Thus, whereas hollow right-wing spiritualism is the explicit antagonist, the nominally liberal infrastructure that enables this explicit and established conservative malfeasance is the implicit antagonist. This is a liberalism that, in public, likely adopts the left-leaning language of compassionate advocacy, but behind closed doors maintains a ring of sexual exploitation to uphold the satisfaction of influential clients. At no point in this circle of influence do the villagers ever get a say.
Sita, The Escort
On the opposite end of the longhouse manager is a young girl who is enlisted to fill up the hotel’s treasury via debauchery. This is a girl who sells her body, but still retains an air of chastity – after all, she’s doing what she can to survive, and you can’t really blame her for her poor choices, because how much agency does she truly possess? And, by the way, you can still save her, bro.
In the Ramayana, Hanuman’s job is to give comfort to Sita while she is Ravana’s prisoner. Similarly, The Kid himself is not destined to rescue Sita directly but is designed to give her hope and support as she endures her incarceration at the hands of her greedy employer. Whereas the mythological Sita remains far more virginal than her movie counterpart, the latter is still offered as a pillar of silent strength trapped inside a moral wasteland.
Sita remains passive for most of the movie in the face of strenuous circumstances. Only at the very end, during the climatic finale does she make a choice to take The Kid’s side, defy Queenie, and clear a path for him to reach Chief Singh’s safe room. In a strange way, this sequence reaffirms the preferred sexual politics of right-wing men: that a girl waits until she is broken free from degenerate libertinism through the leadership of her man, and only acts at critical moments, and within his frame, to enable his objectives. After all, the job of the moon is to reflect back the light that is generated by the sun.
In this vein, it is also revealing that the romance does not officially take hold prior to this moment, nor does it even proceed or resolve afterward. This comports with a Nietzschean perspective of passion: while the amorous aspects of life are certainly enjoyable, they should in no way interfere with your aims as a masculine hero; women are at base an ornament, at best an accessory, and at worst a distraction.
Indeed, it is not even through this pseudo-love interest that The Kid comes into contact with his own tenderness, and reintegrates his long-exiled feminine – the part that was murdered alongside his mother – back into his being.
Alpha, The Hijra
By contrast to Sita’s deference, when his first attempt at assassination fails, The Kid finds himself being nursed back to health in a sanctuary run by hijras, whose leader is named Alpha. Alpha’s temple is appropriately a Shiva temple, given that Shiva Himself presents as intersex in numerous situations. Shaivaites often worship Shiva as both male and female, and also neither. It is only when He needs to more strictly embody certain polarities that Shiva produces Shakti from his bosom and gives Her form (though, this happens in the reverse order depending on who you ask).
Alpha is the one who teaches The Kid to get back in touch with the music of his ancestors. Alpha is the one who encourages The Kid to reframe his sense of pain into a sense of purpose. Alpha’s voice is the one that replaces The Kid’s deceased mother, as his primary form of safety and encouragement. Finally, Alpha recruits all of their fellow hijras to form the secondary fighting force that aids The Kid in his final battle.
Most importantly, Alpha feeds The Kid a root powder that helps him process and release the memories that bind him to suffering. It is said that Shiva’s dance of fury has a psychedelic effect on all of His devotees – and that if you are strong enough to permit it through to its end, your karma will be permanently cleared. Suppose the destiny of the masculine hero is to recuperate his softness – to realize his vulnerability as his fundamental power – before riding into battle. In that case, it is no wonder that Alpha is the one who guides him on that journey.
There is a temptation for Westerners, who abide by a Western political frame, to interpret the director’s narrative choice as an automatic pro-transgender agenda. This is a mistake because the role of hijras within Indian history is a lot more distinguished than elsewhere. For example, hijras have often been allotted the auspicious and life-affirming task of blessing newborns in exchange for basic monetary compensation.
Throughout both Muslim and Hindu epochs, eunuchs have always been strongly involved in the priestly administrations of society. Whether it is that their gender-bending puts them in touch with the animistic aspects of life, or that their impotence makes them a good fit for safekeeping the undefiled consorts of the kingdom, or that their shared deviance inspires strong in-group loyalty – hijras have generally possessed an exalted position in temple affairs.
This is not to say that hijras are unconditionally accepted into a tolerant, desegregated mainstream society. Quite the opposite; in most cases, they are barred from holding even the most basic jobs, which is why they gravitate toward the monastic charity of temple life. Many hijras are castrated against their consent (e.g., at birth), though some self-elect for castration in adulthood and make a ceremony out of it.
No, it is more that the hijras of Indian society have not formed a political consciousness in a similar way to the various deviant coalitions of Western society. To the degree that such a consciousness exists, it is hardly based on grievance (or ressentiment to double back to Nietzsche), although some savvy political operatives may be looking to change this.
Alpha and their chosen family are clearly more exiled than exalted, a position they have explicitly been forced into by The Sovereign Party. Porting this back into our world, it is difficult to identify whether the more extreme elements of the BJP genuinely wish to eradicate entire classes of reproductive reprobates, or if their goal is to limit the importation of specific American sociopolitical schemas into their administrative amphitheater.
In any case, one wonders if the alliance between The Kid and Alpha is simply one borne out of utilitarian convenience (i.e., a presumptive dirtbag centrist anti-Sovereign pushback), or if The Kid earnestly considers his healers to be his friends.
Dev Patel states that this is an “[action genre] revenge film about faith”, and while this is true, underneath the layer of pure commentary, the film fundamentally explicates a politics of destruction. Many people agree that humanity is living through a form of Kali Yuga, if not an outright end-of-days.
Different groups cannot agree on what the final blow will be: whether the emergence of superhuman AGI that wipes out all carbon-based life forms; an all-out nuclear war precipitated by horrific ethnic cleansing scars the planet permanently; or the ravages of climate change and resource scarcity as Mother Earth promises to swallow us back into her molten core.
What every group does seem to be able to agree on is that our current tightly networked global order operates on a fundamentally zero-sum plane of existence, and the 20th-century institutions tasked with keeping order are increasingly descending into fits of vengeance followed by even stronger fits of counterinsurgency.
Assuredly, our salvation will not come from putting our faith into figures such as the devious Baba Shakti, nor the murderous Chief Singh who shields him, nor the rapacious Queenie Kapoor who provides cover for both. One might be tempted to wait for a hero like The Kid, but even he only operates out of a narcissistic sense of justice; driven by a desire to remediate unhealable wounds. Turns out that even the gods are as ape-like as the humans who worship them.
Obviously, it is unreasonable to expect a cultural thriller to lead the charge in providing a manifesto for humanity’s thriving. Nevertheless, a real politics for our future – one that undertakes the task of producing good governance across an ever-diverging set of interests – must be constructive. Let’s hope that the credits don’t roll before we find a way to determine what that will be.
I loved this post, you have an incredibly unique and cutting perspective that makes even reading reviews of somewhat banal movies fascinating
The simple reason that majority of Muslims are happy about the construction of the Ayodhya Temple is that they really did not have any good reason to oppose it. Mosques are not sacred places for Muslims the way temples are for Hindus. The place itself or the building holds no real significance. It is just a place for the community to come together to pray. While the particular temple in question was truly one of the most significant ones for Hindus, where people from across the country travelled to the place just to stand outside the mosque and say a prayer. The majority of Muslims realized all this but they were simply being railroaded and used as a pawn to make the temple a political issue when the court case was still ongoing. Now there is nothing to gain from it for the political vultures and so they have moved on to other things.
And yes, for those that don’t know, the mosque that was burned down in the 90s was built on top of a thousands of years old Hindu temple, specifically to humiliate the “idol worshipping” Hindus. After 500 years of failing to reclaim the temple under foreign rule, we Hindus then spent more than 50 years arguing about the rights and wrongs of it in a court battle. The riots and burning that happened in the 90s was a political stunt that actually ended up hurting the court case.