This isn't a musical, but the Rahman score of moods and rhythms that bring
together an eastern and western spectrum becomes a character. There's no
mistaking the importance it must have had on Boyle's inspiration in the
development of the story, and it might have come to the director's notice
when he heard what Rahman had composed for "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" in
2007.
"Slumdog Millionaire"
Director Danny Boyle's answer to "Across the Universe," I call this lush and
dynamic tale that uses "a boy's quest for the girl" journey and an
exceptionally vibrant musical score a similarly inspired and ingenious piece
of work. Whether the connection I'm making between the two pictures is valid
or not, Boyle brings a heightened level of inventiveness and originality to
his work and to his craft. This powerhouse of drama, crime and romance is a
formula-shattering irresistible force.
The storytelling structure is more than clever as it motivates a time travel
of vignettes, traversing years in the growing up of two "impoverished
slumdog" brothers. So, as my first piece of trial evidence for its
originality, I ask why, at its start, it intercuts between Jamal Malik's (Dev
Patel) turn on the center podium of an Indian version of "Who Wants To Be a
Millionairre" game show with his being tortured in desperate circumstances in
a police station, electric shock treatment, and all.
The answer is that this is Boyle's and his screenwriter's (Simon Beaufoy)
framework. The police station scene is taking place at around the time Jamal
has already won a million rupees--enough wealth to capture the imagination of
the nation. Ratings go through the roof as Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor), the
game master of ceremonies (and the only person who has won the game) put it
into the minds of the cops that this boy who has all the answers might just
be pulling some kind of fraud.
The suggestion, with no evidentiary basis, is enough for extreme police
measures. Once their torture has the affect of making the prisoner talk, the
inspector (impressive Irfan Khan) takes the suspected fraudster through every
one of the answers that has brought him to the point of great fortune. Each
explanation takes Jamal back to his childhood of minor crime, begging,
opportunism, kidnap and escape, to the maturation of con gaming with his
bigger brother Samil. To the rainy night when he first let Latika (Freida
Pinto) join him and his brother in the shelter of a truck, when he first
assumed an unbreakable bond with this girl.
Jamal speaks with total candor, even implicating himself in serious crime,
and dutifully shows the inspector why he was able to answer the game's
questions so well. The stories recount his utter belief in the destiny of
his and Latika's ultimate reunion, even while she's being held as chattel by
a brutal trader in whatever human victim he can turn into cash. As he finds
her and loses her over and over again, the task would seem futile to anyone
else. In fact, he chose to enter the game competition only because he knew
Latika watched it and hoped to make contact through it.
This isn't a musical, but the Rahman score of moods and rhythms that bring
together an eastern and western spectrum becomes a character. There's no
mistaking the importance it must have had on Boyle's inspiration in the
development of the story, and it might have come to the director's notice
when he heard what Rahman had composed for "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" in
2007.
The Indian actors are little known to American audiences save for those who
attend art houses regularly. Of them, who comprise a strong cast, including
the child and teen actors who play Latika and the brothers through time, Anil
Kapoor might be the most recognizable as the game's grand master. Patel's
calm stability is outstanding as the young man who has no guile but answer's
the cop's questions so undeviously that the older man releases him in time
for a big, complex and powerful ending that uses all the hoopla and
excitement of the game itself.
Get it now! (Click on item link) The Soundtrack
The cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle ("The Last King of Scotland") is as
adventurous and varied as the story commands, from documentary style
crowd pandemonium, to the minimalism of the Indian slum, to the grandeur and
spectacle of the game show. Through the visual palette you taste the curry
and the condiments.
And, finally, this isn't Bollywood--not anywhere close. It's the kind of
realism that's the mark of Boyle's offtimes uncompromising style, with
all the criminality and viciousness that greed and selfishness spawns. It
is, after all, out of this miasma of cruelty and idealism that the romance
takes root and fills us with a sense of masterful achievement.
~~ Jules Brenner
http://variagate.com/slumdog.htm?8?MRQE
