Eeb, Allay, Ooo!

 With Bad luck Banging or Looney Porn, Eeb, Allay, Ooo!, the name of Prateek Vats 2019 Hindi language movie, is one of the best titles in recent memory.  The sounds comprising the name of film are utterances intended to repel aggressive macaque monkeys, thousands of which, apparently, mob the area around the grandiose administrative buildings constructed by the British as their colonial capitol in New Delhi.  (This is the so-called Lutyens District, named after the renowned architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens.)  The monkeys are highly intelligent, resourceful and terrible pests.   But they are also sacred to devotees of Hanuman, the monkey god, and, therefore, exempt from any counter-measures that would kill or harm them.  As a consequence, the Indian government contracts with private firms that supply so-called "monkey repellers", men whose  job consists of shouting at the creatures, gesturing in a threatening way, and, in rare cases involving intractable nuisances, capturing macaques in cages and transporting them into the suburbs.  In Vats highly regarded film (it won the Indian equivalent of the Oscar for Best Picture), the hero, a young man from a rural village named Anjari Prased gets a job as a monkey-repeller.  The problem is that Anjari is comically afraid of the aggressive macaques and unable to make the requisite sounds necessary to drive the monkeys away.  And, in any event, the labor is Sisyphean -- no sooner is one monkey repelled than another four or five takes its place.  It's an awful job and Anjari is terrible at the work.  But quitting this employment is not an option.  Anjari doesn't write English, can't use a computer (in any event far beyond his humble means) and is otherwise unemployable.  (His sister and homely girlfriend have used a computer to find him the work -- otherwise, he's completely vocationally helpless.)  So poor Anjari stays on the job with dire consequences.  Although the movie is full of comic, if sinister confrontations, with the highly expressive monkeys (one can see how they might be considered divine), the film is tragic in tone and, ultimately, a dispiriting tour of the underbelly of modern Indian society.

Anjari lives in a tiny hovel with his pregnant sister and her husband, a jovial cop.  The family can barely make ends meet and, furthermore, Anjari's sister is not well -- the pregnancy isn't going as it should and she requires medication, drugs more or less beyond the means of Anjari and her husband.  (Ultimately, the pregnant woman seems to elect to use their scarce resources on medication and, therefore, shorts the landlord with disastrous consequences.)  Anjari's boss is vicious, bullies the unsophisticated young man, at one point, literally lifting him half off the ground by his ears.  Narayan, as the employer is named, is bullied himself by government officials who have imposed unreasonable demands on the monkey-repelling crews -- they have insufficient funds, no equipment, can't touch the brutish monkeys, and are understaffed.  (The director, Vats said that he made the movie to draw attention to the plight of non-union contract workers in his country, a labor force that serves at the will of their cruel bosses.)  Anjari is completely unsuccessful at repelling the monkeys -- in fact, they harass and intimidate him.  His buddy, Mahendar, with whom he smokes weed in a desultory manner, has tried to teach him the vocalizations necessary to intimidate the macaques but Anjari can't learn how to make the sounds.  Desperate, he first acquires colored posters of langur monkeys, creatures that are the mortal enemies of the macaques and that, although small, are, apparently, fierce.  The teeth-baring pictures of langurs are posted all around the Lutyen district, and seem to work to some extent.  But the boss, Narayan, finds this technique unacceptable and threatens to fire Anjari,  Things aren't going well for Anjari in any way, shape, or form.  His co-workers bully him by confining him in a macaque cage where he is taunted and forced to eat bananas before being released from his tormented confinement..  In general, things aren't going well for anyone in the family.  Anjari's sister is sick and her husband, in order to earn an extra 1500 rupees raise, has agreed to work the nightshift for the police force, a job that requires that he tote around a big shot gun, that he really doesn't know how to use and that his wife finds both frightening and ridiculous -- she orders to keep it out of the house.  (This is a good idea because Anjari and his girlfriend play with the shotgun, jocularly pointing it at one another, and the cop-husband ineptly brandishes the gun creating the implication that he is about to shoot someone in his family or a neighbor in the hideously crowded slum by pure accident.)  Anjari uses a slingshot to knock down a macaque.  (He claims a motorcycle ran over the monkey).  Vats shows us the monkey presumably dead, but then a closer shot assures us that the creature is still breathing -- we see the critter's ribs moving.  (My guess is that there would have been a hue-and-cry among monkey-worshiping Indians in the film audience were the macaque dead and, so, Vats doesn't dare depict the animal as having been killed by Anjari.)  During a patriotic festival (Republic Days), Anjari buys a langur outfit, dresses as that sort of primate, and dances around with a furry white fringe of hair around his cork-blackened face and a long serpentine tail, poised to strike like the sting of a scorpion.  This is also a successful strategy, seriously discomfiting the macaques, but Anjari starts allowing tourists to take selfies with him and, even, charges them 50 rupees for a picture, bad conduct that leaks back to Narayan who, then, fires the hero.  (There's a bespectacled monkey-worshipper who feeds the macaques, defies local ordinances prohibiting such practices, and, most likely, informs on Anjari, costing him his job.)  Things go from bad to worse,  Anjari buys some sweets to bribe his boss to take him back on the job -- no one wants this sort of employment.  But he's obstructed from seeing Narayan because of terrible event.  Mahendar, who comes from 7 generations of monkey repellers, has accidentally killed a macaque and been torn to pieces by the pious mob.  Anjari smokes more dope and the monkey god hovers over his shoulder, although the hero doesn't know this apparition is at his elbow.  That night, the landlord comes calling for his rent.  There's no money to pay him and the cop, who is off-duty, points his shot-gun at the importunate landlord, driving him off.  Everyone starts to cry because it's apparent that not only will the family be evicted,  but the brash cop will be charged with criminal assault and, of course, lose his job.  There's a festival sacred to Hanuman, the monkey god.  While this is underway, Anjari pawns his langur suit and tries to sell the police shot gun -- it's said to be 'original' and the pawn shop owner doesn't dare pay for it.  ("Original" is AI translation, I assume, for "real" -- that is, an actual working gun.)  Anjari goes spectacularly mad, painting his face like an ape, and prancing around in some sort of weird ecstasy at the monkey festival.  In the last shot, we see his painted face glaring out from among the masks of figures that seem to represent the mutilated corpses of the dead, mangled-looking ghosts standing in the procession in the streets.

The movie is pretty good and very well-made.  But it's depressing and, more than a tad, pointless -- who wants to see a gentle kittenish soul bullied into oblivion.  The camera-work is all telescopic lenses, pressing the action up close to your nose and the dingy alleys and mean streets are crowded to the point of claustrophobia with motorbikes and beggars and all sorts of people rushing to and fro.  Above, this chaos we see the calm edifices of Lutyen's complex of regal buildings --- great domes and columns and triumphal gates that seem to float in the smoggy, pinkish air. So far as I can determine, the acting is very fine.  The direction is fluent with a very strong sense of place -- for instance, there are as many trains in this movie as in some of Ozu's pictures and the characters are always stalled in place as one train after another rattles down the tracks.  For some reason, New Delhi is portrayed as very cold.  Everyone complains of the frosty weather and shudders in the chill nights -- I presume that for these Indians, cold means something like 65 degrees.  There's a fine scene in which Mahendur and the recently discharged Anjari work together at a posh wedding reception, stalking around the audience vocalizing the film's title syllables to scare away non-existent macaques.  The guests simply ignore the two men as if they are ghosts of some kind, entirely invisible to the well-dressed and prosperous Indians who are mostly messing around their phones in any event.  Mahendur and Anjari go home in the early morning hours, walking empty lanes suffused with amber light from streetlamps and Anjari uses a little dictaphone to record Mahendur's expertly rendered, macaque-repelling tones.