The 5th Monkey
Encyclopedia
The 5th Monkey is a drama film
starring Ben Kingsley
. The film was directed and written by Eric Rochat; based on the novel Le Cinquieme Singe by Jacques Zibi. The original music score was composed by Robert O. Ragland
.
and is intent on making enough money so he can marry a widow in his village. However, his trade - capturing snakes for scientists - pays very little money, and he's in direct competition with other suitors.
One day, Cunda is bitten by a snake
, and he crawls to the river to recover. While going through the agonizing recovery, he has an hallucination of four chimpanzees sitting in the river. Recovered, he returns home and finds the four chimpanzees waiting for him, and his efforts to shoo them away fail. Knowing that chimpanzees are not native to Brazil
, he decides that they are a kind of supernatural gift for him. Believing this, he decides to take them to "the city" to sell them.
The journey isn't easy from the start; he discovers that he can't tie them on a rope and drag them, and the only way is to coax them. They stumble into a gold-panning camp, where Cunda is forced to work in order to pay off an old debt. When one of the monkeys is taken as payment, Cunda must figure how to retrieve the monkey and escape. Later, he, the monkeys and the adults of a village are kidnapped
by mercenaries. Cunda and the monkeys escape, along with a village woman who refuses to leave his side. Arriving at a small town, a confusing sequence results in one of the monkeys disappearing, and Cunda becoming the servant of the local rich woman who has taken it upon herself to take care of the monkeys. Cunda now has to solve these two problems, and deal with the fact of the village
woman's attraction to him plus his growing fondness of the monkeys.
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
starring Ben Kingsley
Ben Kingsley
Sir Ben Kingsley, CBE is a British actor. He has won an Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards in his career. He is known for starring as Mohandas Gandhi in the film Gandhi in 1982, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...
. The film was directed and written by Eric Rochat; based on the novel Le Cinquieme Singe by Jacques Zibi. The original music score was composed by Robert O. Ragland
Robert O. Ragland
Robert O. Ragland is an American film score composer.Ragland attended Northwestern University and also earned degrees at the Academy of Music in Vienna. He served as a music arranger for the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra in his early years.He turned to film music in 1968...
.
Plot summary
Cunda (Kingsley) lives deep in the Brazilian rainforestRainforest
Rainforests are forests characterized by high rainfall, with definitions based on a minimum normal annual rainfall of 1750-2000 mm...
and is intent on making enough money so he can marry a widow in his village. However, his trade - capturing snakes for scientists - pays very little money, and he's in direct competition with other suitors.
One day, Cunda is bitten by a snake
Snake
Snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales...
, and he crawls to the river to recover. While going through the agonizing recovery, he has an hallucination of four chimpanzees sitting in the river. Recovered, he returns home and finds the four chimpanzees waiting for him, and his efforts to shoo them away fail. Knowing that chimpanzees are not native to Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, he decides that they are a kind of supernatural gift for him. Believing this, he decides to take them to "the city" to sell them.
The journey isn't easy from the start; he discovers that he can't tie them on a rope and drag them, and the only way is to coax them. They stumble into a gold-panning camp, where Cunda is forced to work in order to pay off an old debt. When one of the monkeys is taken as payment, Cunda must figure how to retrieve the monkey and escape. Later, he, the monkeys and the adults of a village are kidnapped
Kidnapping
In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...
by mercenaries. Cunda and the monkeys escape, along with a village woman who refuses to leave his side. Arriving at a small town, a confusing sequence results in one of the monkeys disappearing, and Cunda becoming the servant of the local rich woman who has taken it upon herself to take care of the monkeys. Cunda now has to solve these two problems, and deal with the fact of the village
Village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...
woman's attraction to him plus his growing fondness of the monkeys.