PR02: The Monk & The Monkey Animated Short

The Monk & The Monkey from Brendan Carroll on Vimeo.

In The Monk and the Monkey, a young boy is sent off on a quest receiving a sacred item to help him become a monk. The boy, Ragu, goes after the fruit before a monkey reveals itself and snatches it away. Ragu chases the monkey through different places with different obstacles and narrowly avoids catching the monkey. The monkey retreats, dropping the fruit and nearly falling from the edge of the cliff. Ragu has to make the choice between saving the monkey's life, or keeping the prize to bring back in his quest to become a monk. He returns empty handed, believing that he has failed the mission, until the monk reveals that the money was his friend all along and it was saving the monkey that allowed Ragu to become a monk.

This short uses a reversal of identity to make the audience and Ragu to think that the monkey is simply an adversary in Ragu's quest, before it is revealed that he is actually an ally, and was extremely important in Ragu achieving his role of monk. This switch of perception from bad to good makes the ending sweeter, and leaves the viewer with something more positive for the ending. This is hinted at in the beginning, when the monkey is lurking in the shadows during Ragu's conversation with the monk. If the audience is paying attention to it, they may be able to guess that the monkey could be on the monk's side, or could be spying on the two, perhaps in an attempt to find out the location of the item. Though reveals like this can easily be cheesy, I think that it works very nicely to change the tone of the ending, which could have resulted in Ragu not becoming a monk, and leaving the audience with something happier and satisfying to remember.