Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire:


If it weren't for my girlfriend, I would not have seen this movie in theatres and would have either waited for it to come to DVD, or watched in online (and missed the entire experience of actually going to the theatre, and supporting the previously lamented Ridgefield Park Theatre).
I'd read and heard a significant amount about this film, all of it pretty much unanimously positive. After seeing the film, I can say that none of it is exagerrated nor undeserved. This is one of the best films I've since last year, which itself was damn near chock-full of great movies (for the fanboy and cineaste in me).
The story is as such: Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) lands on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and after answering the first few easy questions and becomes the most unlikely contestant ever: a homeless orphan from the slums of Mumbai facing the opportunity of winning 20,000,000 rupees. Suspiscions run high from the host of the show (played with considerable range by Bollywood superstar Anil Kappor) and the police (who believe Jamal is cheating, and they will do anything to find out how he is getting the answers). But Jamal jsut knows the answers. He's not a genuis, and he's not cheating. He's lived the life and through his experiences knows the answers.
It is during his interrogation at the police station that we learn about Jamal's life living in the slums of Mumbai, and how each of the questions asked during the course of the show relate to that life: the murder of his mother; meeting his favorite actor, Amitabh Bachchan; playing with his friends and brother on the runways of airports; swiping food from those better off than he; being manipulated by (and finally escaping) the gangster Maman (Ankur Vikal); watching his brother Salim grow accustomed to life on the street and eventually (and heartbreakingly) pushing Jamal away; meeting, saving, escaping with, and eventually falling in love with Latika (Freida Pinto, as the oldest incarnation of the character, oozing a beauty and elegance I feared was lost in film); getting his job at a telecommunications company, and finally landing on the game show and inspiring all those living in the slums, as well as the nation of India.
I've never seen a Bollywood film (my friend Rob has seen a few...I need to get his advice as to where to start), but if this film is any indication then I shouldn't have too much of a problem following (although I also heard from my girlfriend that they're nearly 6 hours long...meh). The film is vibrant with a life and energy that I'd realized were missed from a majority of late-December releases (you know, the ones that just scream "Oscar!") That's not to say Slumdog didn't scream "Oscar" also, but it did so while also telling an engaging story, running the gamut of cinematic emotions, and pulsing with life; the "Oscar", if this movie was screaming such, was screamed like an afterthought, a gasp of breath in between frentic scenes.
Danny Boyle, a director I admired ever since I first saw Trainspotting back in high school (damn, was that really 5 years ago?), and known more recently for 28 Days Later, The Beach, A Life Less Ordinary, Sunshine, and Millions (among others) managed to surprise me. He allows his cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle, to create a colorful palette of imagery using a variety of techniques (more canted angles than I could count; exagerrated colors; a repetition of scenes and shots; non-intrusive handheld movement; extensive variety of depth-of-field, the list goes on and on). More prevalent are the themes that tie all these elements together: family; escape; truth; love; sacrifice; commitment and luck. It's not to say Boyle's flourishes are missing: there are clever uses and freeze frames and jump cuts (and a combination of the two teechniques that I don't think I've ever seen before), a savage, addictive soudntrack, lots of violence, a street savvy script that doesn't once sound contrived, and a Hindu god standing in a doorway (perhaps the second-best image in the entire movie).
Jamal and Salim's relationship reaches a few apexes, some which were entirely unexpected but none which felt hammy or insincere. When Jamal, after seeing his brother for the first time in years, says, "I can never forgive you", you feel the words. Salim's redemption, as symbolically important as the questions Jamal questions, is perfectly realized, and it is the only way he can ensure the happiness for Jamal and, also, Latika. Jamal's determintion borders on obsession, doing everything possible to get close to Latika; but after everything he's been through in his life, he has the right to hold onto something so dear as closely as he wants. Latika, on the hand, is almost always the victim in the story, and in one of the few scenes where she is proactive and is the only one who can help Jamal, she cannot even do that. That doesn't take anything away from Latika or Freida Pinto at all, oh no. Not every character needs to be proactive, because not everyone in life is proactive. But her lack of being able to take matters into her own hands bothered me some time after I saw the film and was able to think about it.
The cast does amazingly well in their roles. Dev Patel as the grown-up Jamal never once feels out of his element, imbuing Jamal with an innocence yet determination that immediately makes him the center of every scene (although there are a few scenes that are stolen if not by any incarnation of Salim, then by the beautiful cinematography). Freida Pinto is impossibly beautiful as Latika, an orphan who becomes Jamal's singular love and inspiration (it is for her that he competes on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?).
I might be (and probably am) mistaken when I present the opinion that this film is Danny Boyle's most alive film since Trainspotting almost 13 years ago. But whereas that film is almost irredeemably satirical and downright frightening, Slumdog Millionaire is organic, with a definite love for each and every character onscreen (Trainspotting, on the other hand, pushes its characters through gauntlets of abuse, both physical and emotional, and at least two of the characters seem to be unloved by the story). In a conversation about the film with a coworker, I was asked how I viewed the film when I saw it: what did I take away from it? What mood was I in? Was I supposed to take it seriously or just enjoy it? For those who ask those questions and plan to see it I'll let you know that the film pretty much tells you exactly how to view it once the end credits begin. If you stick around for those, you'll knwo what I mean.
On the other hand, antoher question I found myself answering was whether the film is successful (in the States, anyway) for being a Western film in what would otherwise be considered an exotic setting. The Who Wants To Be A Millionaire inclusion, plot point about English cricket players, and hip-hop heavy soundtrack (I will never be able to listen to "Paper Airplanes" by M.I.A. on its own terms ever again), it was feared, was shoehorned into the story to make it more relatable to Western audiences. The fact that most of the locations of the film are set in the slums of Mumbai has been criticized by Amitabh Bachchan at http://bigb.bigadda.com/, and also by social activist Nicholas Almeida, who apparently finds the term "slumdog", which writer Simon Beaufoy apparently made up, to be offensive to the residents of the slums of Mumbai; while Almeida wants to court-order the title be changed to something "less offensive" (whatever the fuck that means), Bachchan's argument seems to be that Western audiences would receive a negative view of what India is. It is not all slums and shoeless orphans. We know that. And yes, Mr. Bachchan, there are cities in Western countries that are just like that, that have worse slums and ghettos and poverty. And those parts of society are also illustrated in movies. Look at Night And The City, or pretty much any movie Scorsese made from 1968 to 1980. This is not a blatant attack on a country's image; it is a story that happens to be set in the slums of Mumbai from the 1980's to 2008. (To be fair, neither of these complaints are held nationwide by India, and Bachchan also commends the film, just with a nervousness that audiences will get the wrong impression.)
That rambling aside, hopefully Slumdog Millionaire will inspire audiences to rediscover Indian cinema, which is the most prolific film industry on the planet (I for one want to see The Story Of Apu now), or study Indian history. That might be pushing it, but maybe I'm wrong. But for a no-star, mostly-subtitled independent film to not only gain explosive popularity, but to also be critically acclaimed and the single film to beat for the Academy Awards, something must have been done right. This is a film vibrating with life, almost ripping from the movie screen and grabbing you by the arm and reminding you why movies are even made.
If you haven't seen the film, do yourself a favor and do so. And stick through to the end credits. They're great.

If only I can get "Jai Ho" out of my head now...