Mumbai magic
*‘Slumdog Millionaire’ is a fast-paced but old-fashioned tale about the
powers of hope and determination*
By Ian Bartholomew
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Mar 13, 2009, Page 16
*FILM NOTES* *SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE*
*DIRECTED BY: *DANNY BOYLE
*STARRING:* DEV PATEL (JAMAL), ANIL KAPOOR (PREM KUMAR), FREIDA PINTO
(LATIKA), AZHARUDDIN MOHAMMED ISMAIL (YOUNGEST SALIM), AYUSH MAHESH KHEDEKAR
(YOUNGEST JAMAL), RUBIANA ALI (YOUNGEST LATIKA)
*RUNNING TIME:* 120 MINUTES
*TAIWAN RELEASE:* TODAY
*VIEW THIS
PAGE<http://www.taipeitimes.com/images/2009/03/13/TT-980313-P16-IB.pdf>
*
Slumdog Millionaire’s sweep at the Oscars can be interpreted in so many ways
that it’s hard to know whether to praise the film for its craftsmanship,
denounce it as a blatant grab by Hollywood for a piece of the Bollywood
movie market, or simply to sniff high-mindedly at yet another cinematic
tradition being appropriated and transformed for mainstream Western
audiences, in the manner of Crouching Tiger, Sleeping Dragon (臥虎藏龍). What
the movie might achieve in terms of fostering closer movie-making ties with
India or in providing an opportunity for Bollywood stars to make a serious
bid for a place in Hollywood remains to be seen. What is perfectly evident
is that Danny Boyle has directed a magnificent piece of cinematic
entertainment. It is perhaps not the groundbreaking work that some have made
it out to be ― Bollywood has been doing something similar for years, and for
that matter, Hollywood did this sort of thing perfectly competently back in
the 1930s ― but there is an energy and emotional commitment to the
characters in Slumdog Millionaire that kicks in right at the beginning of
the film and simply never lets up.
Slumdog Millionaire is an old-fashioned story of the trials of true love in
a mad, bad world, the strength of the human spirit, the power of hope, and
the belief, against all the odds, that things will work out in the end. What
it is not is a story about life in the slums of Mumbai.
The film tells the story of Jamal and Selim, two roguish boys from these
slums. Their mother is killed in inter-communal violence, they pick up with
an orphan girl, Latika, and survive the many perils that life on the streets
presents. Selim finds survival through participation in the gangland culture
of the slums, and Jamal finds love with Latika. Needless to say, the path of
true love never runs smooth. Ultimately it is through Jamal’s participation
in a game show that offers cash prizes for correctly answering general
knowledge questions that he finally gets the chance of a lifetime and sets
the impoverished of the slums from which he emerged dancing in elation.
This is a modern-day fairy tale, but set against a very exotic background of
the Mumbai slums. The story, with its young and occasionally rather dense
hero, who shines out like a beacon of goodness and light, as all around the
strong feed off the weak, has a Dickensian feel. As with Dickens, while a
world of intolerable hardship is portrayed, it is also kept at a distance,
and even a scene were a young boy has his eyes put out is not the
gut-wrenching scene it might have been. Our eye is fixed on whether “our
young hero” will escape the same terrible fate.
The game show, which serves to anchor the many flashbacks of Jamal’s life
that have led him to this point, is a miniature of the film as a whole, with
its suave host Anil Kapoor (Prem Kumar) teasing and bullying Jamal for the
delight of the audience, only to see that innocence will eventually triumph,
not only in the game show, but also over poverty, corruption and moral
turpitude.
The flashbacks provide plenty of color, and Boyle skillfully mixes the
humorous with the shocking, walking a line somewhere between gratuitously
horrific portrayals of slum life in the style of City of God (2002), and the
blandly romanticized slum life of Outsourced (2006). Boyle also spins a
rollicking good yarn, and each episode of Jamal’s life does not simply serve
to move the story forward, but is often a thoughtfully conceived scenario or
charming vignette. These flashbacks are also accompanied by a boisterously
carefree score by A.R. Rahman, which takes in musical styles as diverse as
bhangra through to Italian opera, underlining the overall theatricality of
the production.
While Jamal is the protagonist, he is far from being the most interesting
character in the movie. This falls to his brother Selim, to whom it is given
to express the more human ambiguities of motive and desire, and portray the
grimmer choices of those not buoyed up by love. He is the counterpoint to
Jamal the romantic, and his story, though kept in the background, grounds
Jamal’s in a semblance of the real world.
Jamal, Selim and love interest Latika are played by three different actors
at different stages of their lives, but a remarkable degree of continuity is
maintained, and there is no sense of disappointment when emerging stars Dev
Patel (Jamal) and Freida Pinto (Latika) take over from the real slum kids
who were used to play the roles in early childhood. The use of flashback
allows us to continually compare the adult with the child, giving the
character roles a greater integrity than a linear narrative would allow.
With his clever use of material, Boyle keeps the tone light without ever
becoming fluffy or inconsequential, allowing the story to follow Jamal
through the type of coincidences that would be ridiculous in any film that
lacked Slumdog’s clever script and tight structure. After all, what some
people call coincidence, others call fate, and for all the Jamals of the
world, perhaps there is a happy ending being written even as we speak.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2009/03/13/2003438377
--
regards,
Vithur
