How the Hindu Deity Hanuman Inspired Dev Patel's 'Monkey Man'

“For me, [Hanuman] was also a hero that lost faith in himself,” says director and star Dev Patel. “He didn’t have courage at one point and needed to be reminded of who he was.” Amith Nag Photography via Getty Images In India, monkeys aren’t always viewed particularly fondly. As Philip Lutgendorf, an emeritus historian at the University of Iowa, wrote in a 1997 paper, the animals “are most often treated as…