There’s a 20-minute stretch of the nature documentary Monkey Kingdom that’s more Jacques Tati than Jacques Cousteau. In it, a dysfunctional band of macaques, driven from their home after a territorial skirmish with villainous neighbours (you can tell they’re evil, because of their scarred faces), put aside their differences and try to adapt to the big city. This means swingin’ around the marketplace, yanking packets of crisps, sipping off a leaky spigot, climbing a cellphone tower for a night’s rest and trying to make sense of a domesticated dog. The sequence is adorable, and extremely well-edited, but represents a bit of a tipping point with Disneynature, the usually infallible producer of this film.
Starting with African Cats in 2011, then Chimpanzee, Bears and now Monkey Kingdom, more and more forced narrative has been creeping into a series that at first seemed content to let the splendour of the natural world do the talking. There’s no point in hiding that the first two films, Earth and Oceans, were co-produced by Britain’s BBC and France’s Canal+ respectively. I’m not going to be a self-hating American and say these European institutions make better, smarter films. But I am going to say that the wow factor of those first two movies has been at least partially Disneyfied with what do feel, at times, like cheap tricks.
But, hey – what am I, some kind of cruel monster? No! Monkey Kingdom may be Disneynature’s low point thus far, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a great time. The footage captured on location at “Castle Rock,” an outcropping near abandoned Buddhist temples somewhere in Sri Lanka, is absolutely extraordinary. I’d be content to watch these li’l macaques groom and preen for twice the current running time. Best is when they interact a bit with some of their neighbours – the sloth bears, peacocks, hornbill toucans or, can I get a hell yeah, mongooses. Undeniably fascinating is the film’s explanation of the intricate society that emerges – one of clearly delineated social castes.
Our heroine, called Maya, is a lowborn who eventually becomes a single parent. (Not that her mate, Kumar, is a deadbeat – he is driven away by Raja, the alpha male.) As we watch her struggle to nurture her young amid various bad climates and food shortages, it’s hard not to flash on various social realist dramas. That is until the narrator, the always agreeable Tina Fey, chimes in with some jokes.
An quasi-Bolshevik story emerges in which Maya, thanks to her cunning and knowhow, is able eventually to achieve top monkey status. The end credits come before Orwell’s Animal Farm scenario plays out, don’t worry. Social justice is more of a vague value tale, here – a little something to graft onto the already remarkable footage of the monkeys in their world.
While Disneynature is hardly red in tooth and claw, one must give credit for not sugarcoating this too much. Some of the periphery monkeys do die. And with the soundtrack going and those Kuleshov closeups in full effect, don’t tell me Maya and her young child aren’t mourning. Also, while Maya’s amorous adventures are off-screen, there is a fair bit of nursing, for viewers who flinch at the Free the Nipple movement.
Other Disneynature films, particularly Oceans, truly floored me with “how the hell did they get that shot?” moments. And Chimpanzee’s story, about an orphaned young chimp adopted by the leader of the tribe, felt more like peeking in on another world. Monkey Kingdom certainly has its moments. When thick clouds of flying termites emerge after a monsoon, offering a life-preserving bounty of easily snatched sustenance, it’s a montage straight out of Terrence Malick. Yet there’s an palpable vibe of not quite nailing it. Scenes like crashing a kid’s birthday party and yanking his cake are great band-aids, but it’s the first time reality has ever crashed in on me in a Disneynature film, leaving me to think, “wait, why’s this camera there?”
NB: As with previous theatrically released Disneynature films, donations are made to conservation groups based on tickets sales during the first week, which coincides with Earth Day, 22 April.
• Monkey Kingdom is released in the US on 17 April
