It is important that we tell these stories: Monkey Man
It is important that we tell these stories.
There are so many baffling creative choices in Monkey Man. Sitting in a near-packed theater in the New York financial district right after I got off 9 hours of work on a Thursday evening, you can see why the first feeling I got was one of sensory overload. But if you stick with the film, you quickly realize that amidst the chaos is where the beauty resides. And the lack of a method to the madness is a method in and of itself. Dev Patel, in his feature directorial debut, manages to achieve a feat some seasoned filmmakers are unable to: create a visual story that is as provocative as it is enthralling.
The film starts off as setting up for an Indian ‘grass to grace’ story, akin to White Tiger (2021). And because I went into this without seeing the trailer, I kept wondering why Patel would go through all the surrounding hullabaloo just to make another cliche story. For those who don’t know, Patel broke his hand while filming, had to cancel shoots due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and eventually, after selling the film to Netflix for $30 million, the whole thing got shelved because Netflix felt it was “too political.” Patel then shopped the film around with no luck until he showed it to Jordan Peele who was so immediately taken by the film that he convinced…
