Bandar (Monkey In A Cage)

In Anurag Kashyap’s Monkey in a Cage (Bandar), provocations arrive early. When a man held in custody is asked to sign papers, he refuses because he cannot read the document. “It’s in Marathi”. The cop’s retort flies back: “If you want to stay in Maharashtra, you have to know Marathi”. Later, there is an elaborate jail song, condemning everything from religion to caste-based divides. Kashyap has been angry for a while. The filmmaker’s rage has been so palpable that it percolates from social media posts to his films. His last couple of original works have been topical indictments — each more incensed than the other, and defined and undone by fury. At this point, his anger is a knotty glaze on his films — impossible to ignore but also distracting. The pattern has been so consistent that baiting seems to be the intent and the whole point. His latest, Monkey in a Cage, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, is a more obvious step towards that direction.