Slumdog Millionaire: Today is Slumdog’s Day
The poster of Slumdog Millionaire reads: What does it take to find a lost love? Money? Luck? Smarts? Destiny?
Now how the hell one distinguishes between Luck and Destiny. Come to think of it even ‘Money’ gets mixed up with these two options. And then you find yourself crying for a fifth option, ‘None of the above’. Oh! forget the details. Just get on with it.
In more than one interview, the director of the film, Danny Boyle has quoted the great British director David Lean’s approach on how to open a film – he says, the first five minutes must establish the ambition of your movie (explains the opening energy in Slumdog Millionaire while running around the slums in Mumbai). I am thinking of Lean’s own tryst with India in adapting E.M Forster’s ‘A Passage to India’. It is said that Satyajit Ray had twice approached Forster for the rights of his book. But the erudite Cambridge Don (also a racist and incidentally gay) would not part with it. And then Lean was granted the rights and he made the film. Satyajit Ray in his review of the film said he liked Lean’s work but for couple of mislaid details in casting (I suspect, Alec Guniess playing a Hindu priest), props and architecture that were not true to the context and setting.
I am no Ray, but Lean’s follower Boyle surely is a disaster on counts of details. As someone who saw the film late in the day, you are aware of the views in the public domain and the recognition the film has got. The press is gaga over the film and indeed the fact that the film has been nominated for 10 Oscars (results in another few hours!) and has already bagged no less than other 62 wins and 27 nominations! The imdb users have voted the film at number 34 among the top 250 films of all times!
All these for a film that has not gotten right that teenaged kids from Mumbai chawls do not have a British twang when they speak English (if at all). That gangsters would not know the inventor of the gun just because they have used it, the blind beggars will not care or recollect whose mug features on an American dollar bill just because he has been tipped with one and surely they are not going to know that a particular song has been sung by the 15th century poet Surdas because the song is NOT Surdas’ to start with (it is by a Bollywood lyricist from the 1950s). A sequence has a gangster asking his mistress to ‘fix me a sandwich’, when he should have ordered for daal, biryani or some such. Still if I were to pick one flaw it would have to be the language and how it was spoken in the film. For nearly two third of the film’s run, one feels being held in a pincer grip and taken on cheese-grater ride. One can see why this film might work better in subtitles especially for non-Indian audience (but that’s pulling a fast one on ‘em).
There are things going for the film. The film’s set up and the structure is most inviting – here is a reality show where with each question a most unlikely winner will inch towards winning a fortune. And for each question we get to have ‘juicy’ insights into the protagonist’s back story that involves love, sex, violence, hatred, the underworld, and even class wars. The film starts well – the first two episodes – when Jamal tells how he answered the (easy) questions on a superstar and a Hindu god – are the most (and the only) interesting parts of the film. Some have thought that these two episodes show India in poor light; I for one only wanted more of these – scenes that had both novelty and (social) significance. Unfortunately, the film meanders and dips from here on. As the reality show questions become more difficult, the plausibility of how Jamal found the answers becomes more suspect. There is a long detour (surely for the tourist-minded) when the film takes us away from Bombay to visit Taj Mahal in Agra that has no connection to how Jamal got a question right.
The film is a result of brisk direction and has several inspired moments (that’s about it. Boyle’s Trainspotting? Yes, any day). There is some good acting especially by child actors (and by Anil Kapoor, host of the reality show; it is embarrassing to see that the actors who are hogging the limelight are not the ones who were the best in the film) and a sound design that props up the flagging film through out. The cinematography has been used with cunning to particularly ‘block out’ the ‘details’ – a great service for a film doing so poorly on this count.
The best aspect of Slumdog Millionaire is that Danny boy has seen us to and possibly through the Oscars… when a series of our home-bred filmmakers and stars failed to do so despite trying very very hard (with equally inferior films). I am keeping my fingers crossed for Gulzar. It will be a little ironical that Gulzaar gets an Oscar nod for one of his lesser works but I am hoping that it will be a satisfying recognition for Bollywood’s poet-lyricist par excellence.
Anyhow, I went to salute the master, came out envying Danny Boyle. JAI HO!
Tags: anil kapoor, Danny Boyle, dev patel, Freida Pinto, imdb, Oscars, Padmaja Thakore, 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
And the first one, as it is announced. Best adapted screenplay for Slumdog!
Resul wins the first Indian award and what a speech!!
Yep, The Mozart of Madras wins THE Oscar…
Best Director! Danny!
Best movie too!! It was written indeed!
Good review. At last, someone speaks about the real problems of the film and not ‘indian poverty’ crap. As neeraj says, It was written indeed!
The language thing – I understand that the assorted accents of the cast sound wrong to Indians, just as the Australian who dubs most male voices in Hindi movies set in New York sounds funny to Americans – but the American audience basically experiences the characters as speaking HIndi (if they know the name of the language) which has been translated to English, I think, so we don’t notice anything.
Like the French people in American movies who speak English with a French accent, etc.
nicely put forth, and for all these reasons and more I do not think that SD was worthy of winning 8 oscars. Perhaps 1 for Sound Mixing and for best adapted screenplay but 8 Oscars? WTF? yes I am happy that Rehman got recognition for his works but Dev and Frieda are hogging the limelight for what reason? They were terrible in their acting. Dev was all British Accent and Frieda was no more than a prop. The Guy who played Dev’s brother was more convincing as a gangster while Dev looked far from the chaiwala. Irfaan was great as the inspector and even Saurabh Shukla in his 2 bit role as the hawaldar. Anil Kapoor nailed as the talk show host and don’t forget the children. The real stars were the kids but instead Dev and Frieda are hoggin the limelight. Danny Boy got away with a series of cliches in SD and walked away with 8 Oscars. I am sorry to say but the west has gone crazy. For years they did not treat quality cinema from India and now they give one below par movie 8 oscars. No Disrespect to Danny he made a good commercial movie, but essentially he worked the system and the west got moved enough to give Slumdog Millionare the awards. Did someone consider the ripple effect of all this? Benjamin Button was nominated in 12 categories if I remember correctly but did not win much, so at the expense of dark knight it gets the visual effect Oscar. What stupidity. I think last year the best movie to be made in Hollywood was Dark Knight it married commercial and realistic cinema beautifully. Why don’t OSCARS celebrate commercial cinema? That’s what keeps it alive, instead they go for art house stuff, Slumdog’s success is for that reason alone. I as an Indian feel that the movie is good but did not deserve so many awards as it has received. If only the people in west can understand that and evaluate stuff more objectively. Howsoever I am happy that a movie like it got the awards with a largely indian crew in it.
I agree with Neeraj…
What does it take for a film to get an oscar….script? direction? stars? marketing? destiny?…we know the answer in this case
watch danny boyle saying on british imperial hangover and bollywood…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEkpatB-k0U
congrats! india for gettign oscars.