What do you get when a director with a penchant for the grotesque takes the premise of a bestseller, wraps it in the setting from another-bestseller, bastes it with Bollywood flavors, spices it with irresistible visuals & music and rounds toff with a casting that carries off the whole ensemble with panache rarely seen from established actors?
You get Slumdog Millionaire. A joyous, at times gory but always entertaining, Bollywood ode to destiny, friendship and love.
Several thousand words have already been written about Slumdog Millionaire in the form of reviews, blog posts, etc. I do not plan to review the movie here. Far more eloquent writers have done that already. These are just my thoughts on what made Slumdog Millionaire a worldwide phenomenon - a hands-down winner at the Golden Globes and a prime candidate for Oscar glory.
To begin with, Slumdog Millionaire is based on the premise of Vikas Swarup’s "Q and A".It’s the classic rags-to-riches story that has us rooting for the underdog. But it is worth noting that it’s only the premise of the bookthat has found its way into the movie. Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), aslumdog, chai-wallah, musketeer… bred in poverty.
On the verge of a Rs.20 mn windfall on “Who wants to be a millionaire?” has to justify how he could answer diverse questions that could have flummoxed even highly educated “doctors and lawyers”. It is in his justifications that the movie deviates from the book. I felt "Q and A" was too grim and laid too much emphasis on sexual exploitation that had a movie faithfully followed its plot, it would have succeeded inshocking the audience but would have achieved little else.
SimonBeaufoy brilliantly adapts the premise into a screenplay that retainsthe essence of exploitation and struggle but adds a comedic drama oflove around the idea… a drama that carries the audience towards the tumultuously uplifting finalé.
While the movie has some fine performances from its cast, one of the mostenduring characters from the movie is the city of Mumbai. Danny Boyleand Simon Beaufoy reportedly drew inspiration from Suketu Mehta’s “Maximum City" to portray the “real” Mumbai. Together with Dod Mantle, the cinematographer, they have recreated the pulsating underbelly of Mumbai on screen.
True, the movie largely depicts squalor and poverty, attimes dipping (quite literally) into the slushy depths of hell. Butwhat always shines through is the never-say-die attitude and thevirtues of friendship and love. And for this reason, I do not agree with Amitabh Bachchan’s criticism of the movie’s portrayal of poverty(and the supposed implication that all of India was a poor Third Worldcountry).
Because by that yardstick, we could easily say that India wasmade up of coolies (from Bachchan’s own Coolie and Hum).And more importantly, the underdog and rags-to-riches themes are whatearned Mr. Bachchan his immortal “angry young man” fame. What also works for the movie are the performances.
Dev Patel, eventhough it stretches credulity to think of him as a slum kid, gives astandout performance as Jamal Malik. Freida Pinto as the evanescentLatika, Madhur Mittal as the practical Salim, Irfan Khan as the smartpolice inspector and Anil Kapoor as the slimy superstar game show hostPrem Kumar… all of them give good performances. But what hits home isthe fact that as far as worldwide audiences are concerned, these areall unknowns (except Irfan Khan and to some extent Dev Patel) and sothe performances come as pleasant revelations. And the kid actors, real-life slum-kids themselves, are in one word, “brilliant”!!
Even though Slumdog Millionaire’s soundtrack is not AR Rahman’sfinest, the very fact that he has won the Golden Globe for it and is in contention for the Oscars, speaks volumes about Rahman’s genius. The soundtrack is cleverly Bollywood mainstream, but tweaked enough to appeal to the global audiences.
I do not want to sound like a fanboy of the movie because I am not.The movie’s hardly perfect and there are instances that made me go, “Ahem!”. For example, the kids are too young to be reading/studying“The Three Musketeers” in school. They drop out of school at too young an age to readily speak fluent English while conversing with foreign tourists. They always escape way too easily with ruthless criminals chasing them.
Well, you get the picture. But to dwell on these things would be to miss the point. The movie crams romance, thrills, comedy, loss, serious drama, satire, social commentary, songs & dance and whatnot, in a two hour capsule. It is a celebration of Bollywood masalagenre for the western audiences and needs to be seen as such.
Everybody loves an underdog. Especially when the underdog defies the odds and comes up trumps. For a large part, Sumdog Millionaire is a journey-through the school of hard knocks. So even though the movie’s climax is predictable, you end up rooting, cheering for the underdog Jamal, ashis fortune (in more ways than one) hangs in balance. And what more could a director ask for when the crowd leaves the auditorium with the feel-good chant “Jai Ho!” in their hearts!
If you want a recommendation from me, I’d recommend that you watch-this movie. Not because its about Mumbai, not because it’s based on a bestseller, not because it has won awards, not even because of the success of it’s unlikely ensemble cast. But because it’s a great entertainer. And that is all. After all, it is written.