http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

I figure that if I just keep typing, something profound will eventually come out of all this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/infinite_monkey_theorem

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Analysis of 'Romeo & Juliet: A Monkey's Tale'

Alright, a little background before I jump into this analysis:

What is Romeo & Juliet: A Monkey's Tale?

Romeo & Juliet (Romeo on the left)
     -This film is a documentary about two tribes of Macaw monkies in a city in Thailand. the One tribe resides in the marketplace and the other in an abandoned Temple and the two are seperated by a busy street, ensuring they don't interact. the story is told from the point of view of Tybalt the monkey.
    -One of the female temple monkeys (named Juliet) begins to mate with one of the marketplace monkeys (named Romeo).
    -Romeo crosses over the street to the temple and he and Juliet spend the night together. When the other monkeys find out they attack Romeo who returns to the Marketplace. Juliet then crosses to the marketplace and gets attacked by the monkeys there. Romeo protects her but she is still attacked, which causes the temple monkeys to freak out. The temple monkeys attack en masse.
    -After Romeo is literally kicked out of his tribe and gets on a train - no joke, the monkey literally climbs aboard a train and goes to the countryside. A famine and some other documentary stuff ensues.
    -Juliet remains a very depressed monkey and goes down to the train tracks everyday, presumeably to wait for Romeo. Everntually Juliet hops onto a truck and ends up being reunited with Romeo in the countryside. Yup. Monkeys.

Tybalt the Monkey

    -So, our theory is that these documentary folks saw all this unfolding while filming the monkeys and realized, "Holy Cow! This is like Romeo and Juliet!" Which, all things considered, it works out fairly well. Also, Tybalt frequently uses lines from the play to emphasize the correlation. Lines such as "They did bite their thumbs at us" and "The drought made wormsmeat of us."

So, with all this in mind, it's time for a little analysis. I won't analyze much, because ultimately it is a documentary, with monkeys, but it does still allow for a little bit of study

Themes found in Romeo & Juliet: A Monkey's Tale
    -Hate - You could argue that these two tribes of monkeys really do hate one another, but I think it's more of a survival thing and won't get into that as much.
    -Love knows no bounds - It really is interesting to see how two monkeys who should never interact still manage to come together, and continue to spend time with one another despire their tribes outrage. Even more impressive is that they do find eachother in the end (although I suspect some intervention by the producers since they film Juliet jumping on the truck and then riding in the truck and the truck miraculously goes to where Romeo ended up) But still, this monkey got on a truck with the faith that she would find her mate. It really does warm your heart with the concept of love knowing no limit.

3 comments:

  1. You said this was your favorite movie so far, Why?

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  2. It was by far the easiest...it was cotton candy Romeo and Juliet. so I probably should have said that it was the easiest and not my favorite because I prefer other interpretations of the play

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  3. What is your favorite interpretation so far and why?

    ReplyDelete