Not a Million Reasons for Slumdog Millionaire making Millions
iView Author: Naram garam (Los Angeles/U.S.A)
Not a Million Reasons for Slumdog Millionaire making Millions…
This post is dedicated to Kenny who urged me to quit complaining and write a bit.
Young, mid-twenties, blond haired woman: “Two for Slumdog.” Old white man in his Southern accent: “Hi, I would like four seniors for Slumdog Millionaire please.” I heard old, young, white, black, brown, most people in this long holiday line at an indie theatre in Pasadena chant for the latest “Danny Boyle” flick. What about Slumdog is different, is new, is so catchy that Hollywood is responding in such an unexpectedly devout manner? Is it A) Danny Boyle B) India C) Bollywood D) The new hip thing to do or E) All of the above. I wonder if Jamal Malik would get this answer exactly right.
I saw the film at a Fox sneak preview and was also enlightened by a not so enlightening Anil Kapoor who could only rave about his correct judgment (or rather his son’s correct judgment) of his participation in the film. Let’s just say that any detailed thought was just not within reach of his inspection of the film which, amongst other things, melted a childhood hero in front of my eyes.
During the last month, just silently observing filmmakers, peers in and out of the industry reacting to Slumdog Millionaire, I have been wondering what exactly about the film has translated to the West. I had a couple of control cases, what if some unknown director from India directed the flick; would it be as much of a sensation? Well, maybe they would direct it in Hindi and work with actors who subsequently were more accurate in their dialect and depiction of slum people. It would certainly be more “authentic” but would it be more popular? Clearly, by now you can guess that I think not. Danny Boyle, who I admire to the core as an adventurous filmmaker, clearly has the pull and the built-in fan audience to create the seed audience for the film and clearly his involvement is what has caused the initial snowball to form, the other factors which I will mention later, were in my opinion the grease for the snowball effect.
Hollywood is vastly interested in Bollywood these days. Whether it is Will Smith’s Overbrook investing or Yash Chopra’s Roadside Romeo cooperation with Disney or the Ambani-Spielberg-Dreamworks venture, there is clearly a foresight in the business titans of LA that India has and will be a big player in the movie business owing to the die-heart loyalty of film fans. They thought that Hollywood would probably not replace Bollywood films in India in terms of popularity, so why don’t we stark taking a bite out of the Bollywood industry, whether it is Saawariya or Singh is Kinng or Chandni Chowk to China Town? Smart I say. So the occasional eruption of the Bollywood or Bombay or Mumbai or India or Hindi or Yoga or Ashthram effect is clearly surfacing and resurfacing for the American audience and so here comes a film indulged in just enough authenticity of the “true” Bombay and just enough of a Bollywood style in terms of the love story and the shockingly much appreciated end credit song gag and just enough of logic to make it digestible to a self-taught and more knowledgeable audience, and boom, the volcano erupts, the fireworks are unleashed!
With the right timing, the right ingredients and the proper distribution plan, Slumdog Millionaire is easily this year’s favorite holiday cookie. It might even find itself an Oscar nomination or wow, even a win. Not to say that it is the best movie of the year, but clearly the most popular because by this time all you young ones hopefully know how the world, the industry, politics and its ranks work.
And for the few of us who wished that exhibition dollars aside, the film was in Hindi or Dev Patel worked a bit more on his accent, who cares. It is not about being perfect, it is about delivering at the right time with mostly the right ingredients and you have a happy film cast and crew, a happy studio and a happy American family returning from the theatres chanting, “Wow, I never saw that side of Mumbai, I guess they keep that away from the tourists.” To which I thought, “Taj to the dark limousine to Goa to the dark limousine to spas and yoga and massage to the dark limousine to the airport will certainly make you miss that side of Bombay…but then again, who cares and who is listening anyway!”
Tags: anil kapoor, Danny Boyle, dev patel, frieda pinto, Slumdog Millionaire
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
I couldn’t agree more…You’ve put my thoughts/whingeing in to words…:)
Welcome to PFC and thanks for the dedication (gave me quite a shock though when I first read my name before seeing yours – I thought maybe one of the know-it-alls on Anurag’s Dev D Genesis post had decided to dedicate an entire post to bashing me).
Anyway, that’s quite a non-controversial post to start off with
@ Tanya. Thanks for reading, this is my first post and am a bit intrigued at what people have to say.
@ Kenny, is it non-controversial? I suggest reading between the lines :o)
Really great post! You write really from the heart and have all your facts straight, which is something that always turns me off to movie reviews – most critics don’t… Anyway, I have to say I came into this article with a pretty one-sided attitude. I loved the film and it could do no wrong in my view. But you have made me understand the popularity of the film and some of the forces driving it. I could not agree with you more that an Indian director – say a Sudhir Mishra, for one – could have gotten the authenticity of the slums and of the “hidden Bombay” much better, but Danny Boyle has the enthusiasm to sell it to those middle-Americans in line at the cinema in Pasadena.
Oh, and Kenny, funny stuff about your first reaction! But have to agree with Naram Garam that the post is a bit controversial…
You know Naram Garam,
For whatever reasons it might be. Technology, experience or money. Some people can create a creation while rest of the world blogs about its creators and not the creation. Although it is extremely frustrating but this is is a fact that can’t be ignored. Thank you for reminding that.
And I’m sure that same american family would have got a strong ego-booster when the american lady in the movie goes,”Well,here is the bit of the real America,son” and then her husband shoves a dollar on our “poor” protagonist’s face and he takes it happily after getting roughed up.
The movie couldn’t have been anymore phony.
Anyway,nice post. :-)
Slumdog Millionaire is the most bigoted turd of a movie I’ve seen in a long time, masquerading as an uplifting feel good movie.
Is this your perception of the humanity of India ? We must be inhuman assholes, it’s in the news isn’t it?…does it empower you like me to feel so much better than the billion you came ? to accept the narrative of the rest of “them” as cruel barbaric swine ? We must be barbaric of course we must, for god’s sake we don’t even have air conditioning !!! how wonderful the sanitised and peaceful west is on the other hand…with the old locked away in “nursing homes”, the poor locked away on ghettos and the masses uniformed in a new trend every season…how terrible the indians are for not providing social security and welfare for a billion plus people and how wonderful the west is for providing even people who can’t afford one with two maybe three lines of credit that they are locked into for the rest of their lives at 18% interest…how corrupt the indians are while the fine upstanding west pums trillions of dollars of bubbles in the world markets for the last two decades and fixes the problem with trillion dollar bailouts snatched from the tax paying public into the coffers of the one percent at the very top…how enlightened the west is ! it turns of it’s lights for one hour a year during earth hour and how imbecelic the indians and chinese are for polluting the earth and all for producing the world’s goods and commodities working around the clock ! don’t they know the wonderful and well administered pinnacle of human society needs the energy for marvels of modern motoring that climb 60 degree gradients at a clip with their V8 and V12 engines…
how dare these heathen fucks, who don’t even accept good old fire breathing “you will burn and scream in an eternal lake of fire for questioning the undying love of GOD” jesus as their one true saviour, show humanity and love and kindness…
They couldn’t possibly live so congested in anything resembling beauty ! They must have no spirit..they must have no love..no soul…oh god look at the hideous ten limbed demons they call gods..ewwwwwww…tell you what ? we’ll give literary awards to every indian writer in english who demonises this festering pit…we’ll fete them and these little brown shits, with their post colonial inferiority complexes, who never read these books will celebrate them too..
They’ll never question our flawed narratives for we are white, we have more cultural penetration, they hear our music, watch our TV, our movies….hell everyone knows even in the 24th century the white man sits on the big chair..right captain kirk ?
We own the narrative, we are the gatekeepers of perception, they are just little crawling brown underlings grasping for assimilation into our narrative to be considered relevant…they must never have a narrative of their own…NEVER !
@Avdhesh
“masses uniformed in a new trend every season” <— Here’s something that really gets my goat too. I HATE “trends” and all that “what’s in” and “what’s out” shite! You’ve put it very beautifully.
Your long comment is what now really makes me wanna see Slumdog. Dekhte hain aakhir maajra kya hai
naram garam..ya, it wud not hav been so big if it wasnt danny boyle. but i loved it. its pure masala, paisa vasool film, nothing more than that and dont think it even pretends to be something else.
Avdhesh…you are so fuckin bang on target…! ‘they must never have a narrative of their own..never!!’…lol
Naram Garam – That was a very well-written post. Very perceptive.
At the end of the day, cinema made by or about almost every region in the world is the prisoner of certain well-established stereotypes for the mainstream American audiences.
1. French cinema – Cutesy romantic comedies
2. European cinema in general – If it isn’t about World War II or the Communist era, no one’s interested.
3. Chinese cinema – Martial Arts
4. Japanese cinema – Anime
5. Iranian cinema – cute kids (heaven forbid if it’s about complex adult issues)
6. British cinema – Hugh Grant and Colin Firth playing fops.
7. Indian cinema – weddings and suffering cute kids
spot on Phoenixnu
Indians love to scratch their scars to raise some money, whats new in that!
Poverty display wrapped in the polished tatter of art, is an age old happening in India.
And now these Karma laws getting back to us, due to minority sighs is a new enlightening trend set by the like of Arundhati Roy and BS junta…
Avdhesh…thanks for beautifully putting into words what a lot of us feel..lagta hain dil ka bhoj thoda halka ho gaya.
While I agree with the post overall, I really don’t using Hindi instead of English would have made a difference. SM is simply a movie that is smartly made with a smattering of realism from the streets of Mumbai, and obviously well marketed (a la JTYJN). Any attempt to read more into it or expect more from it is futile
@ avdesh, I agree with that sentiment but the best thing for them to know is that our films work for our audiences and we don’t really need “foreign” money to break even!
@ Ajit, I just felt the switch between both languages was very obvious and a bit disconcerting, it is just that it took me out of the movie a lot at times and that is always a bad thing for me. I want to be lost and be with them at all times.
@ Dewi, thanks!
Thanks for reading everyone!
@ Dewi, you know those cliches are there for a reason at some point though…right?
Naram Garam – are you implying that the cliches are an accurate representation of the film cultures of these nations and regions? Surely that’s not true. Iranian films are hardly all about cute kids, and Chinese cinema is a lot, lot more than martial arts.
not at all, I am saying that there is always some resemblance and some source of cliches in every culture. They cannot be completely ignored despite their shameful reduction to oversimplified interpretations of complex cultures and societies and religions.
to me d movie SM represents that we have to wake up n eliminate poverty. there is a lot of suffering goin on which we r unfortunately immuned to. we r not living in a perfect world. we’ve to create a system that would lift millions out of poverty. i couldn handle it when d eye of that little kid was taken out. d worst thing was that it happens in india. i don wanna be immuned anymore. i want to be part of d solution.
P.S i hope this movie becomes a hit.. especially in india..
The transition of language, from Hindi to English, is too obvious for an Indian. I can sympathize a little since the movie is not targetted at just Indians, it’s targetted more towards a Western audience. But again, I will sympathize only a little. It is consoling that Slumdog is not the only culprit here. Even in big-budget Hollywood movies like Valkyrie, you have German characters who speak in British and American accents. If you make it more authentic, then you lose the audience. Very unfortunately true.
Contrast Slumdog with a small budget movie called The Pool (http://www.thepoolfilm.com/thepool/), which is directed by Chris Smith, an American documentary filmmaker. The cast is entirely Indian and moost of the crew is American. In fact, even the dialogues are mostly Hindi, interspersed with a little bit of Goan. I loved the Pool and thought it was beautifully made. I read up a lot on it afterwards. Chris Smith was working with kids who didn’t know a single word of English. They didn’t even know how to read Hindi. He literally picked up these kids from the streets. Imagine how tough it must’ve been for him to communicate his desired dialogues and expressions to those kids. To convert those circumstances into fabulous performances is one helluva-n achievement. I appreciated the efforts of Chris Smith more after watching Slumdog. It’s not only a more superior film, but a better directed film as well.
bloody bang on Avdhesh
the only thing the gora west do not open their mouths about is their racist worldview, but it still shows up everywhere
waiting to see the film for the bizarreness of indian slum kids speaking english