[ad_1]
iHeart Podcast Awards 2024
At a festival known for its raucous audiences, Dev Patel’s “Monkey Man” was the loudest screening yet.
During the SXSW premiere of the actor’s directorial debut, Austin’s Paramount Theater was filled with chants of “We love you, Dev!” and “India!” which can only be described as guttural. The public’s love for Patel grew more fervent as the film progressed, revealing not only a new cinematic voice, but also a surprising political action thriller in which Patel’s character took on the Hindu caste system with teeth, knives and blood.
“The system has abused the action genre,” Patel said when introducing the film. “You know, quick money. Pointless shit. I wanted to give it soul. Real trauma. Real pain. You deserve it. “I wanted to infuse a little culture into it.”
The film follows Kid (Patel), who makes do with the money he earns after being beaten in an underground fight club before an unresolved trauma from his childhood leads him to infiltrate the social scene of the wealthiest and corrupt of his city. As it becomes clearer that the people who murdered his mother continue to inflict Islamophobic and casteist violence on millions of people, he joins others on the outskirts of society to exact revenge on their common enemies.
“I really wanted to address the caste system in India,” Patel explained after the screening. “There are the poor below, working like slaves in the kitchens. Then you go up to the land of kings. Above them is God, a God created by man who contaminates and corrupts religion.”
“Monkey Man” is produced by Jordan Peele, who came on board long after production and, as Patel said, “dusted it off, put it back on the mantel and gave us this opportunity.” The film was originally going to be distributed by Netflix before being redirected to Universal Pictures, where Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions label has an overall deal. It is believed that Peele pushed for the deal after seeing the film and feeling that he needed something more than a streaming release. After thanking Universal executives Donna Langley, Peter Cramer and Michael Moses, Peele said, “Thank you for seeing what we saw in this movie. “This is a film that simply demands to be seen in a theater with a huge, raucous audience.”
Introducing Patel on stage, Peele said he had “never seen anyone put their heart, soul, body, mind and energy into a story more than this man.” And as he recounted the journey of making the film, Patel proved it true and listed a multitude of injuries he suffered in the process.
“I broke my foot two weeks before filming and then I broke my shoulder,” he said. “And in the middle of that fight in the bathroom on the second day, I broke my hand. I finished filming all that night and my hand was like an elephant’s. You can see in the movie that sometimes there are some wraps, which are from the surgery. I got on a plane, they put a screw in, and the doctor said, “You can’t put it in.” any pressure on it. If this nail bends, it will be like pulling a bent nail out of wood. You’ll ruin your hand. I went straight back to the action scenes.”
“I have a sick brain,” Patel said when answering an audience question about how often his character bites his opponents. “I had to be as arrogant and drooling (as possible). “I got an eye infection from crawling on that bathroom floor.”
There were more mishaps besides all the bodily harm.
“We face a catastrophe every day. “We were originally going to have this incredible team of Hollywood stunt people, and then the borders closed,” Patel said, while “Monkey Man” was in production when the pandemic hit. “So we went on YouTube, started watching videos and found Brahim (Chab, a specialist). He was in Thailand and the border was still open, so we said, ‘Hey, can you come tomorrow?’”
“There was not a single piece of photographic equipment that worked properly. That shot during Diwali, when the camera was rotating on the people, the crane broke. So we said, ‘Let’s put it on a rope.’ What if we could release it while they’re swinging and then run through the crowd? I’m just constantly trying to find a different calibration.”
Despite all that Patel accomplished as a debut director, he didn’t always plan to direct his own films.
“I was just trying to find a way to tell this story. I wanted it out there,” she said. “Reluctantly, they pushed me into the driver’s seat and it all unfolded from there.”