Salaam Danny, you got the best MASALA….
……and what a delicious masala it is!!
(The writer of the post is supergreedy when it comes to number of views and comments. The post was written a month back, before the Globes, Baftas and Oscars. But the greedy writer decided to wait till its friday release. And what a day today! those who could enjoy/loved it…hurray…those who could not/did not…as Tina Fey said…suck it!!)
It got dust, dirt, shit, slum, Amitabh Bachchan, riots, cricket, begaar mafia, hindu-muslim, Taj Mahal, indian railways, gang war, surdas, call centres and more!! It got dosti, dushmani, bhai-bhai ki ladaai, bachpan ka pyaar and a game show!! And its a love story at the core. Am i missing something ? Am sure there are million other things.
SPOILER ALERT
I am very apprehensive about west selling desi exotica…the snake charmers, the monkey mans, the elephant rides. And so when i heard about Slumdog Millionaire, wasn’t sure what to expect. Since last few months, have been reading all possible features, reviews, interviews and was dying to watch it. Would Danny Boyle do the same ? Finally relieved! He doesnt. He hasn’t cooked indian curry for the west…its desi….pure desi…the masala that we all love…..a fairy tale. Ek tha raja, ek thi rani, duno mil jayenge, hogi khatam kahani. Its Boyle’s Bollywood debut! And man, remember how the 80’s hero would grow up running, trying to catch a train, rolling after a big fight or any activity that involves fast motion….this got it…Jamaal and his brother fall off from train, keeps on rolling, grows up and lands near Taj Mahal….If its not masala, what else is ? And yes, without making you feel like a dumb desperate for few laughs!
The only indigestable part is the use of english language. But am told by those who know, if it wasnt english language, none of the studio would have given it such wider release….well, if its so, let it be. Though the entire film is not in english. The childhood story of Jamaal and Latika is in hindi and the kids are terrific. Remember Darsheel’s freind in Taare Zameen Par…i loved him more than Darsheel and here he is. Tanay Hemant Cheda and Ayush Mahesh Khedekar play the young Jamaal and they are the best part of the film. You can’t take your eyes off the screen when they are on screen. Ayush Mahesh Khedekar is the best actor of 2008 for me….the best discovery!! Sourabh Shukla is superb in a small role, Irfan Khan and Anil Kapoor play their parts well.
Like in his many other films, Slumdog Millonaire also has the same trademark kinetic energy of Danny Boyle. And with Bombay/Mumbai as the setting, he goes all out and shows what we havent seen in very long time! Add A R Rahman’s sound to those visuals and i was flying high!! Also, watch out for Amitabh Bachchan…the best homage ever paid to him….wish someone will show him the film or has he already seen ? Have always felt that indian railways have great cinematic potential which we havent explored much. That chaiyaa chaiyaa was fucking toy train that i still cant digest. Finally Dannyji creates some magical rail moments which will make you smile.
Yes, its also suspension of disbelief but its not killing of disbelief, which we have got used to now. courtesy the Bazmees of bollywood. Have also been reading a lot about how it was shot, the cameras and all that. But when i was watching the film…it wasn’t about the art and the craft of filmmaking, it was the EXPERIENCE!! And very few films manage to give you that experience. Ah cinema!
Everyone loves an underdog. The rags to riches story has been told million times, even the triump of love over dirt, dust n shit is nothing new but still there are ways to tell the same story in a new way…with love, lot of passion and full of energy. So you can either watch the film like a cynic and wonder why is the constable running so desperately after the kids in the first scene OR you can just sit back and enjoy because fun is always on the run. Add Rahman’s beats to it. what else do u want ?
And like in our cinema, its all written. You know the fate of hero-heroine at first glance. Its the same for Jamaal and Latika. Aur upar se bachpan ka pyaar hai yaar!! How can you deny them ? And how do you so easily get to participate in the game show ? During my college days, we used to wake up early and start trying our luck because the hotlines used to open from 7 am. But never, never we could make it. Guess what, it wasnt written !! Thats why its a fairytale. And may be like the story, even the journey of the film was WRITTEN. Because first there was no producer, then no distributor and no plans and see how far has the film reached. Hopefully its big bang all the way.
Yes, we dont make films like SDM. And we cant. Its very simple…try your luck with any producer and tell them that your script has nine kids as heroes (three kids in three different stages of life). I can bet that nobody will give you any time. Or they will ask you badawala kitne ka hai ? 18 ? Usko 28 kar do na…we can then have Fardeen or Zayed Khan. Ya Vivek Oberoi or Neil Nitin Mukesh ya comedy hai toh Ritesh mast rahega. Nine unknown actors come from different parts of the world and they become Jamaal, Salim and Latika. Thats where the film scores! Thats why we cant do what Danny Boyle has done. Or just see the campaign that they have done in India. After all this, they have put Anil Kapoor and Irfan Khan on the posters…we are still not sure about it….without any stars, who will come to see a film!! We need to see Anil and Irfan…the character or length of the role doesnt matter. And if you are regular reader of PFC, am sure you have read million such stories from filmmakers who are trying to find a way to make their distinct voice heard without the starry scripts!
About selling shit and poverty, dude, every hollywood film makes me believe its a country of retarded people who are always ready to jump in the bed and every family is dysfunctional. Pedro Almodovar makes me feel that Spain is full of transvestites, homosexuals and every family has gender issues. Do we blame them ? No, it depnds entirely on the filmmaker what he wants to show us.
And the world has to love it…call it hype or over-hyped….but in times of recession, when both fear and hope are not four but five letter words…KASAB and OBAMA, everyone is looking for that triumph of human spirit. The materialistic world does romanticises a Jamaal for whom a crore or two doesnt matter. All it matters is bachpan ka pyaar!
So, start the new year with a bang..with Boyle’s bang. I think we lost the formula in 2008 and churned out shitload of dumb masala films. ( the way we are going about it, think the multiplexes should have a brain deposit counter next to the box office…when we buy tickets, we could deposit our brains there and the multiplexwalas can earn bit more than parking charges) So here’s the masala and the formula, all back!! It celebrates bollywood, it celebrates our cinema without making us look like idiots. It got everything thats typical and still its fun!
DONT MISS IT!! And there is no disclaimer with this one, like we have got used to…..you can watch the film with your freinds, lovers, family or strangers!! So, will the gangs of Ghajini, Jodis made by Rab Ne and singh is king generation come out for this masala ??!! m waiting.
And just when i thought, it was all over, Dannyji packs up that one last thing that was missing…a dance number…with kitschy credit roll….jai ho, jai ho, jai ho…its d anthem of the year for me…will be difficult to beat this joyride!! And as i sat down to write this post, i couldnot get this line out of my head….Toh Tu Mere saath dance karegi na……aaja…aaja….aankhiyoon ki neend maine phoonkoon se uda di, gin gin taare maine ungli jalayee hai…jai ho….jai ho!!
Tags: a r rahman, Amitabh Bachchan, anil kapoor, Ayush Mahesh Khedekar Tanay Hemant Cheda, BAFTA, Danny Boyle, Golden Globe, obama, Oscar, 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
exactly my sentiments…loved SDM to the core…one of the best movies which provides entertainment with lot of other things….
You sound so happy…so very happy…
I like your kind.
Congratulations for being able to enjoy a movie…with so much conviction…my heart goes out to you.
JAI HO! perfectly written pnu.. everyone needs to watch this without overanalyzing.
I would say have a tylenol/anacin/saridon and morphine handy.
The Indian audience is lucky that they also have the option of a Hindi version releasing tomorrow. And it’s called Slumdog CROREPATI!! It’s got to be more enjoyable than the English one. … Aur waise bhi ek crore, ek million se zyaada hota hai naa? ;)
ohh teri…awesome post pnu..btw Boyle and Danny is five letter word too ;)
Great feel good movie regardless of who made it. It is a fairy tale but with an authentic backdrop that many of us can relate to.
Nice one Pnu…what our directors couldn’t do it (selling desi masala to west), Danny Boyle did it in style. It celebrates our bollywood.
A fine movie man, I agree with you, Danny Boyle has got a fixation with shit though, in trainspotting there are two scenes… McGregor Drops his suppository in the pot and goes fishing with his hands and you gotta see the state of that loo.. and his friend (cant remember the character name) gets so sloshed that he soils the sheets and there’s a tug of war on the breakfast table the next morning about who does the sheets and the shit flies… I like the brash visuals Boyle uses. Also the media in India is obsessed as to why this movie was not made by an Indain or is this really an an Indian achievement. I dont care if it takes a gora to show us that we ought to accept the way we live and appreciate the beauty of our inherent tolerance toward all shapes and sizes so be it. Let the K JOs and gang suffer for promoting films that can be best called as a scam.
“That chaiyaa chaiyaa was fucking toy train that i still cant digest.”…….
dude, what the hell u r talking about? Chaiyaa Chaiyaa was shooted on ooty moving train. I guess u never been to ooty and in that train. I was there while the song was shooting.
If you have to praise someone, please don’t ridicule others. Mani Ratnam is one of the finest director we have in our Indian film industry.
SDM ia a tremendous achievement of team work. The crew have showcased such beautiful talent. Each one of SDM requires a special handshake.
more power to Indian Techs. More power to Indian talent…more POwer to ARR.
super over-rated movie :S
Phoenix, I wholeheartedly agree with you. Slumdog is indeed brilliant. It just lingers on. The youngest Jamaal is a heart-throb. Can never forget his little jig at night with Latika! Amazing stuff!
aaahh finally amidst all this shit thats been going around, something and someone who makes sense.
exactly what i feel….
look who came to the potty – oops party.
( the way we are going about it, think the multiplexes should have a brain deposit counter next to the box office…when we buy tickets, we could deposit our brains there and the multiplexwalas can earn bit more than parking charges:))))))
Awesome review!
kal jaa raha hu dekhne
aake likhta hu kuch …
:-)
well done with the write up – its brilliant !!
Satya Vachan!!! Abso’fucking’lutely Enjoyable. And a freaking Awe’fucking’some post.
Put beside movies like ‘The Reader’ and ‘Benjamin Button’, SDM looks exactly like Jamaal coming out of the shit-tank. For me who has long traded his Fellini and Passolini for escapist J-Horror, “The Reader” is and will remain one hell of a movie watching experience of recent past. Although in an economy so eager to touch Indian market the chance of SDM’s flying in colors seems to be very high but to all the honest PFCers I implore to watch all the other academy nominations and then to judge how would it feel if Danny Boyle score over David Fincher or Stephen Daldry.
For the music, the buzz is already out from couple of Rahmaniacs with whom I chatted that if he gets an Oscar for this then God forbids, whatever little chance is there for us to get another Roja/Bombay is gone for good.
Pnu – finally u realise the facination with SHIT and TOILETS and great cinema and film-makers and minds and genius…..ahem!!!! Danny Boyle Shit kare to sona….main kahun to pee-tal..
Danny Boyle himself admits he has a fixation….says probably its a British thing….
“Yes, we dont make films like SDM. And we cant. Its very simple … Fardeen or Zayed Khan. ya comedy hai toh Ritesh mast rahega”
True very true and when you tell them estimated budget is 15 million dollar (roughly 75 crore rupees), he will make secret call to mental hospital or you will have to do so!
But Jokes apart,if given complete creative freedom and budget we can make films like SDM , i mean if satya , maqbool,black Friday are made for peanuts (compared to SDM), if this director had that much budget , i am sure those films could have been better than SDM (in terms production value , storywise toh better hai hi)
Why Vikas Swarup isnt there anywhere in all this hoopolah. Nothing about him just a footnote sentence that hes the author of the book…DB n team have brought it to life , fine, but still where is the author in all this….why…
PNU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You’ve already written everything I wanted to!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But thanks for saving me the trouble! I watched it yesterday – it’s doing well even here in Guwahati – and I LLLLLOOOOVVVVEEEDDDDD IT! I’ll be watching it again soon.
@ Detractors I really don’t see how Danny Boyle’s “exploiting Indian poverty”. Should we simply shut our eyes and pretend all the evils he’s shown in the first act don’t exist in our country, and slam a firangee because he’s had the guts to show them with such exquisite, harrowing detail?
For me, SDM is escapism rooted in reality. (Wow, what a phrase. I feel intellectual.) It deserves whatever awards it gets.
You are so right about Danny Boyle’s kinetic energy. And Rehman’s music was fantabulous!
Vasan, even I was thinking Danny Boyle has a thing for shit ;)
For me, SDM was a good bollywood masala film. Nothing great. But why is it getting the kind of attention that many of our well made “good” bollywood masala films didnt get? Why?
I have no issues with poverty, gora director and shit.
Because we didnt lobby for it, producers, rascism… Why?
Kennnnnny….what is that saying…some minds think alike…hehehehe. feel the film has the potential to work everywhere….guwahati or ganganagar….the only challenge is to get people to theatre, once in, people will enjoy it. escapism rooted in reality….ma kasam…kah di tune…tu kya kha-pi raha hai aajkal!!
as far as detractors go…i hav no interest in listening to them cz two parallel lines will never meet. i know all those blah blah n feel sad for them, who cud not enjot it. cz with this one there r loads of happy news attached. the fun is all ours! who gives a fuck about them…jai ho!
the song at the end spoiled the moment for me. really.
i mean, even for general bollywood standards, it was atrociously out of place. it killed the mood, the moment, the emotion.
or may be i was taking jamal and latika too seriously?
@Phoenixnu,
This post :
(those who could enjoy/loved it…hurray…those who could not/did not…as Tina Fey said…suck it!!)
and comment 28 :
(i know all those blah blah n feel sad for them, who cud not enjot it. cz with this one there r loads of happy news attached. the fun is all ours! who gives a fuck about them…jai ho!)
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If things are like this as you have mentioned, is not this right time for PFC to close its shop?
You have been loving (or say liking which is more appropriate word) few films and you have been hating (or say disliking as its more appropriate word) few films and same thing you can say via one line reviews.
Phoenixnu liked SM,
Phoenixnu disliked SIK or JTYJN.
what is the need for you to go for this blah blah blah blah and spend energy in writing 1000 words to say something more?
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it really did not mater for Danny Boyle if he was casting unknown faces or known stars as long as his producers had well thought starategy about how to shape up the film and how to release it step by step in different parts of world and then to carry it to India.
Even if he was casting faces, known (if not wel lknown) in India, it could not have made any difference for western audiences.
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You say, children were amazing, music was superb,and if film had some weaknesses then every film has.
Are other people speaking in Farsi?
They are saying same things.
Why things can not be mentioned and discussed on PFC?
Why it happens that blind followers become more fanatic and film goes in the background and opinions start becoming more important?
Where such fanatic attitude will carry the place?
Things have come again at that point because a film is liked by some or many, so it has to be praised by all and nothing about its shortcoming can be mentioned.
Is creating film reviewers the sole motive of PFC?
RK…this fanatic attitude in the words doesnt mean that i am going to stop anyone who writes anything against d film. ofcourse, pfc will remain like it is, with both sides fighting with their arguemnts. And if this was film review in conventional sense, i would never dare to write that way as tinay fey said. since its a blog post, it will always be opinionated. and if blog posts turns like article/features in mainstream media, m least intersted.
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whatver was well thought strategy, it needs lot of guts to make a film with nine kids. and not have a single star. it cud hav gone completly unnoticed. now, ofcourse its east to say “well thought strategy”. n if it was so simple,wonder why producers were not willing to back it, why the original distributors backed out ? what happened to those strategies b4 fox searchlight came into picture.
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and the opinions are all about the film. so films r always in focus. and who cares about film reviwes. its just opinions. and m here to read that.
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with SDM, those who love n hate it are on two parallel tracks, i dont think the two will ever meet. not that its any problem, but its like that.
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btw, give me any film that u like n will find the differnce in the complexion of its characters at different stages or differnt complexion within d same family. depnds on what we want to c and what we want to ignore!
@Phoenixnu
Its beyond my comprehension how on earth Danny Boyle could have casted “STARS” in the roles which kids were supposed to play?
It has happened many times that producers were changed. Gandhi took more than 20 years, though technically one can say that shooting was finished in few months only.
Much before the film (shooting) was finished, OSCAR buzz had come into the air.
How much truth is known how many changes DB had to make in his script to convince different producers? It will be naive to accept that film has been collecting awards solely on the basis of its cinematic merits. If everything is so fair and this is the merit which is required and marketing strategy and influential manouvering is not involved then FUTURE is really bright and many good and really deserving films should be recognized and awarded in near future.
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Re: complexion thing.
That post is dedicated to people writing on films in that tone and texture. Its not the way I write. I write in a way as second post has been made. That was tribute to many of the guys writing on PFC also. If some of you are disturbed because it came through SM then let it be.
That is not what I want to see in the film.
its futile to repeat because if you have not understood the fictional nature of the post then you will not get it now also but still, not all things have been presented as accurate observation.
Many are deliberately weak observations, because it has been done with many films, time and again and they represent thoughts of many people and not one person.
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There is no such thing as people who love and hate SM. Its generated by few people.
No matter how big admirer you are of SM, you can not justify everything in the film.
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This is true, it depends what you want to consider while writing. In so many films you would object same things which you wish to ignore in SM.
To see is something different. You can not decide what you want to see in a new film. Atleast I can not decide before hand what I wish to see in a newely released film. Only after watching the film, I can have views while recalling the film.
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This is up to an individual to point out scene of love making under the sea or ignore it under the fantasy thing. I am not sure anybody may kiss 6 feet under the saline water.
If pointing out this is taken as opposition of whole film, then nothing can be done.