The nod to Bollywood also comes through A.R. Rahman's pulsating music,
especially an exuberant item number in the end credits, shot at VT
station.
Slum 'N Bling
Boyle's film on India wows the world
Namrata Joshi
| e-mail | one page format | feedback: send |
Anil
Kapoor had given little thought to the smses inviting him to play a
role in British director Danny Boyle's new film set in Mumbai, till he
casually mentioned it to his teenaged son Harsh. "Dad, do you
understand who Danny Boyle is?" was his exasperated query. "He showed
me the poster of Trainspotting in his room and briefed me on
Boyle's cult status," laughs Kapoor. Not only was he forced by the
teenager to accept the role of TV show host Prem Kumar, but also fetch
him Boyle's autograph on Kapoor's copy of the script. Kapoor can't
thank his son enough.
Slumdog's bollywood connect is instant. "In a way, Boyle is decoding our
films—Deewar to Satya."
After Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding, Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire is set to
be the next big celebration of India on global screens.
The Film4, Warner Bros and Celador Films production premiered early this month
at the Telluride film festival to a rapturous
response from the audience, and bagged the Cadillac People's Choice
award at the recently concluded Toronto Film Festival. It will be the
closing film for the London Film Festival, releases in the US on
November 16 and UK on January 23. It comes to India early next year.
Dev Patel and Irrfan
Scripted by Simon Beaufoy of Full Monty fame, the film is based on diplomat
Vikas Swaroop's novel Q and A, about an 18-year-old illiterate slumboy on the
verge of winning the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
Assuming him to be a fraud, the police begins interrogating him, even
as the narrative moves back and forth in time to show how the kid had
been using his own life experiences to figure out the answer to each of
the questions.
For viewers, Slumdog has proven to be
energetic, colourful and thoroughly entertaining. "The film is not
shying away from pleasing the audience. It's a rollercoaster," says
Irrfan who plays the role of the inspector. Critics have been as
enthusiastic. Stephen Garrett in Esquire calls it "a
preposterously enjoyable victory against all odds." "Driven by
fantastic energy and a torrent of vivid images of India old and new, Slumdog
Millionaire is a blast," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy. Joe Morgenstern in the
Wall Street Journal has called it a "densely detailed
phantasmagoria—groundbreaking in substance, damned near earth-shaking in
style."
Patel and Freida Pinto
The Bollywood touch has not gone unnoticed
either. "It's an exuberant, sometimes exhausting hybrid, bursting with
violence and sentimentality, equal parts Bollywood and, well, Mr
Boyle," writes A.O. Scott in the New York Times. Like Boyle's
previous films this one too focuses on the underdog, but also has the
epic sweep and "pure, undying love angle" of Hindi cinema. For Indian
viewers, there could be an immediate connect with Yash Chopra's Deewar—Slumdog
too is about two brothers who go divergent ways. Boyle is reported to have seen
and appreciated films like Ram Gopal Verma's Satya and Company and Anurag
Kashyap's Black Friday, before he embarked on Slumdog.
"He captures the essence of these films and blends it with a
contemporary, realistic narrative. In a way, he's decoding our movies,
from Deewar to Satya," says co-director Loveleen Tandon.
The nod to Bollywood also comes through A.R. Rahman's pulsating music,
especially an exuberant item number in the end credits, shot at VT
station. The film was shot on location in Dharavi, Juhu and Gorai from
November last year to February.
"While Boyle immerses the viewer
in the poverty and tragedy of life as an orphan's, he deftly avoids
delving into the murky realm of 'poverty porn,' which treats the lives
of those caught in such circumstances gratuitously," writes Kim Voynar
in Cinematical. The film doesn't exoticise India either. "It
shows urban India in its entire gamut—from slums to call centres to
billionaires and bling. It's not the white man's point of view," says
Tandon, "Boyle is apna banda, he is totally desi "
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20081006&fname=ASlumdog+(F)&sid=1
