Mild spoilers for Dev Patel’s Monkey Man are ahead. If you haven’t seen this action entry on the 2024 movie schedule, you can catch it in theaters now.
While Dev Patel’s career reinvention, the injuries he overcame while making Monkey Man and the incredible action in the film have been at the center of the project’s positive discourse, conversations about the transgender representation in the film have also been a point of conversation. It’s a fantastic film with LGBTQ+ representation, and recently, Patel spoke about why it was important to include these trans and gender-nonconforming characters in his directorial debut.
In Monkey Man, Patel’s character is taken in by a group of transgender and gender non-conforming characters after falling off a bridge. They help nurse him back to health, explain to him why they live away in a temple, and ultimately, they help him defeat his enemy. The director/star explained why including these characters meant so much to him, telling Variety:
This is an anthem for the underdog, the voiceless, the marginalized. For me, I wanted to take this old mythology and kind of take these characters who I thought was this hero Hanuman who had lost faith in himself, [he] didn’t realize who he was, and [he] needed to be reminded by fellow outsiders of who he was. And together, they waged this war for the good and the just. And for me, I just really wanted to include the Hijra community, the third gender in India.
The Hijra community in India today includes transgender and intersex folks, and according to NYT they make up “their own somewhat secretive subculture” in India’s LGBTQ+ community. Also, in 2014, per NYT, the country’s Supreme Court recognized this third gender, marking a landmark moment for transgender people living there.
Dev Patel said that he wanted to represent the three genders, and the temples that showed “freedom,” “sexuality” and “philosophy” that were ahead of their time:
This is at its core, a revenge film about faith and the beauty of faith. And, you know, faith we should be fighting for each other, not against each other, that’s what it should do at its best. For me, you know, it’s become rigid over time. And you look at the old carvings in these temples in India and like the freedom, the sexuality, all of it, the philosophy or so ahead of its time. So I wanted to try and dive into that sort of, and make that sort of the lore of the film.
Vipin Sharma, who plays Alpha, one of the leaders of this community, spoke to Variety about going to a screening of Monkey Man for the trans community. He explained why it meant so much to him and the audience he was with, saying:
At a screening yesterday, I met some transgender community people, and I was almost in tears when they said they loved it. They loved the representation and they were very happy about it. That just touched my heart.
It’s wonderful to hear that so many have felt seen by Monkey Man, and that they found the trans representation in the film touching.
Monkey Man has been getting positive reactions from critics and audiences alike, with many pointing to the valiant point Patel made about it being an “anthem for the underdog, the voiceless, the marginalized” as a reason why. This group of people who take Kid in are accepting, loving and strong, and their stories shine a light on and represent the Indian trans community. To see all these wonderful characters as well as the epic action in Monkey Man, you can catch the film in theaters now.