I had been talking about how impressed I was with the auteuristic stylings of Anurag Kashyap. To that end, I hunted down his children’s animation Hanuman Returns, a movie obscure enough that Netflix had to send it from Canada.
Never have I been so bitterly disappointed in a cartoon. Based on his earlier work, I was expecting a coherent and stylistic adventure. This was a total mess.
The movie begins with an apocalyptic battle between the gods and the demons. This has to have been taken directly from the vedic scriptures, because it makes absolutely no sense. Vishnu shows up on the back of a bald eagle (I can’t begin to parse that symbolism), and beats up a many-armed demon in a Mighty Mouse comedic style. This wakes up a yogi master who had been meditating underground, and he resurrects all the demons. It ends with the yogi guy and all the demons flying to Saturn.
It makes me sad that Judeo-Christian mythology doesn’t have any knock-down drag out god-on-demon action, but this sequence seems to have almost nothing to do with the rest of the movie.
Then we flash-forward to what may or may not be the present. There’s a curious blend of medieval and 20th century elements in most scenes, but I suppose gods don’t particularly care about chronological niceties like that, so anachronism ain’t a relevant criticism.
Here’s a youtube clip of Hanuman demonstrating his character as a boisterous strongman. Take particular note of time 3:00 on the clip, where Hanuman puts George Bush, bin Laden, and some pirates (?!?!) in a net. Also take a look at where he makes the Statue of Liberty dance and reshapes Mount Rushmore as a Hindu shrine. Again, more unparsable symbolism.
I’m impressed with how flippant this movie gets with Hindu theology.
I mean, there’s a scene where all the monkeys of the world fight the space demons. That’s practically Mormon weird.
Unless you’re fanatical about monkey related films (and you know who you are) then you ought to leave this one alone.