When the lights fade up, Jamal (Dev Patel) is in the hot seat of India’s version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” He has made it through round after round of questions -- a feat so improbable for an uneducated boy from the slums that disbelieving police tortured him between shows, demanding to know how he cheated.
Now, he sits and waits for his chance to win it all. “So are you ready for the final question for 20 million rupees?” asks the show’s host Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor). “No, but maybe it’s written, no?” Jamal replies, referencing just how fateful his presence on that stage is.
The general premise behind Director Danny Boyle’s (“Trainspotting”) epic saga “Slumdog Millionaire,” an adaptation of the novel “Q&A” by Vikas Swarup, is the improbable destiny of an underdog -- a poverty-stricken orphan and his chance at glory.
The movie, which almost didn’t get a theatre release (its original distributor, Warner Independent, folded last year) and was shot entirely in India with unknown actors, recently won eight academy awards-- including best picture, best director, and best cinematography.
So, with that said, is it safe to say the movie has somewhat paralleled the path of its protagonist? Or, am I reaching?
Well reaching or not reaching, the movie’s dominance in the award sector can be attributed to its heart-racing pulse, dynamic soundtrack, and the cinematic journey moviegoers take around the tin-roof shacks and garbage-strewn alleys of Mumbai.
The narrative fuses flashbacks with shots of the game show, shedding light on the long, cruel, and sometimes amusing paths of Jamal, his brother Salim (Madhur Mittal), and the love of his life Latika (Freida Pinto), and the instances in his life where he learns the answers to the questions that have brought him so far on the show.
The scenes are colorful, larger than life, and sometimes heartrending--as they focus on the dramatic nature of absolute poverty and the struggles the characters face.
In one scene, Jamal swims through the excrement of a public toilet in order to get an autograph from his Bollywood hero
In another, Salim and Jamal nearly fall from the rooftop of a moving passenger train.
The graphic images of the squalor depicted in “Slumdog Millionaire” have the movie being praised by some as an act of righteous social commentary and denounced by others as capitalistic exploitation (London Times columnist Alice Miles called the movie, “poverty porn” )
To all of this, both praise and criticism, I say lighten up.
“Slumdog Millionaire” is a touching modern day fairy tale – both buoyant and magical – and inspires hope while capturing the imagination.
We need not dissect what’s on the big screen in order to get the bigger picture.
(Photo credit: by masterorz -- Flickr)
Great review. I liked the movie a lot, but I agree that both praise and criticism have been overdone. A few people I know have spent time in those slums. They say that the depiction is accurate. I would never have believed that someone could have created an uplifting story using those slums and orphans as its foundation.
ReplyDeleteBut come to think of it, maybe that's exactly what Dicken's did in another era.