Danny Boyle’s much ballyhooed film is a crowd pleasing tale of star crossed lovers searching for connection on the busy streets of Mumbai. Simplistic and sentimental, the dramatic action, which jumps back and forth in time throughout, cribs generously from a variety of sources: Dickens’ Oliver Twist, the musical Annie, Bollywood, Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick, Fernando Meirelles’ City of God, and Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay (with an odd nod to August Strindberg’s Miss Julie). The story centers on Jamal, a young Muslim boy, and his older brother, Salim, both orphaned after a violent attack by ravaging Hindus (or so I’m left to assume). A third youngster, the lovely and beautiful Latika, joins the brothers and soon the melodramatics kick into high gear. As a young man some fifteen to twenty years down the road, Jamal works his way onto “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire†(or “Kaun Banega Crorepati,†which appears to be a cultural phenomenon throughout southeast Asia), and the film is structured around how this young, uneducated “chai wallah†utilizes his “hard knock life†as a tatterdemalion to answer enough questions to potentially win 20 million rupees on national television. Each question triggers a flashback and so forth and so on. I’m doing my best not to give too much away except my mild disappointment in this thick slab of populist entertainment.
One could argue that Slumdog Millionaire chronicles India’s economic ascent during the age of globalization, but the film’s lurid portrait of India is painted in oversaturated hues. The film itself is visually busy—unnecessarily so. Everyone is corrupt, filth and degradation cover all most surfaces, and idealistic young love is a crap shoot at best. One thing that intrigued me is that Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy seem to extol western virtues throughout, celebrating a “pick yourself up by the bootstraps†mentality that privileges individual will over the community. Perhaps such notions are also celebrated in India. I’ll be curious to hear what others have to say.
i haven’t seen it yet, but i would imagine it cribs mostly from q&a, the novel on which it is based.
OK, Q&A cribs. Did you read the novel, and, if so, what were your thoughts? [time elapse] I just read a relatively extensive plot summary of the novel. It appears as if Boyle and Beaufoy kept the structure (mostly) but radically rewrote the novel to fit their purposes. A number of key sequences in the novel are nowhere to be found on screen. Still, I’ll be curious to hear your take when the film opens wider (seeing as it recently won best film from the National Board of Review and is being frontlisted to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, I suspect it will be rolling out a lot faster than planned).
I had meant to write a review of this for a couple of weeks now, but never got around to it. Like Jeff, I didn’t find it nearly as enjoyable as most of the big reviewers.
It is well shot, I thought a few actors were good (and the woman who played the oldest Latika is heart-meltingly beautiful), and it did have my attention throughout.
But…
SPOILERS:
What’s up with the torture first of all? Are the cops corrupt (somehow? It certainly doesn’t play into the plot) or is it just a foregone conclusion that Indian cops will tie you to a rafter by your arms and beat you and hook you up to a car battery as a normal means of questioning?
Add to that the horrible death of the main guy’s mother, blinding children with acid so they’d be better beggars and tossing children from a fast moving train for stealing a piece of bread. Ho ho ho – ain’t childhood in India a rich tapestry of experience and colorful characters? I’m pretty sure I don’t remember coming across water torture inflicted on the imps in any Dickens novel.
So yes, growing up in crushing poverty and trying to keep your soul… It’s quite the battle. I saw Slumdog a week or so after Tsotsi finally made its way up our Netflix queue: Crushing poverty in South Africa. Has anyone else here seen this? At least in Slumdog the evil effects of the brothers’ lives lands firmly on the character of Jamal’s brother. In Tsotsi, it’s all on the main guy, who makes himself completely irredeemable after the first half an hour. It’s a brave attempt on the director’s part to try to make the audience care again for this guy by giving him an infant that he kind of tries to keep alive (he does at least brush the ants away from him after tossing an open can of cream into the paper bag he uses as a crib)
Realizing he needs more help to care for the baby, Tsotsi manages to put another half a dozen lives in jeopardy with his selfish, stupid decisions, including the life of a single mother whose own husband had been killed by thugs similar to Tsotsi. We’re also shown a younger version of Tsotsi, who has a dying mother and an abusive father. Oh no! Sorry, but that probably describes a few million people in Africa right now, and it didn’t make me any more sympathetic for Tsotsi becoming a psychopath. It’s exasperating, but believable, and therefore the more depressing for it. Unlike Slumdog which is only believable in its most horrible images and not at all in its fairytale parts.
There are two things that I really dug about Slumdog Millionaire. 1. The subtitles are the best I’ve ever seen in a movie. Finally someone decoded to acknowledge that they are part of the movie and they put them into the picture. They didn’t detract and screw up shots, they were easy to read, and worked as words in comic books work, as part of the picture. 2. Danny Boyle’s interviews. Listening to him talk about the making of this movie: The casting of a British kid for the lead, the bribes, the help of tons of people in Mumbai, simply because they want to help, the reasons they secured the Millionaire franchise for no money, and everything else – it’s all tremendously entertaining, moreso than the movie. Here’s one: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96982584 there was at least one other I heard with him that was also really good.
Danny Boyle’s one of my favorite directors, partially b/c of his willingness to cover massive ground from film to film and his willingness to fail spectacularly (The Beach and that terrible last 45 minutes of Sunshine). I’m glad a lot of people love the movie – the theater was totally packed when we saw it. I just don’t feel the love.
What do I love? Synecdoche, New York. It’s the best movie I’ve seen from ’08. I want to see it again right now.
I learned something after seeing it. When critics slam a movie with the line, “It’s so confusing I stopped trying to figure out what was going on” I”m pretty sure that it’s a movie I and anyone with half a brain is going to like.
The subtitles in the cinema version of Timur Bekmambetov’s Night Watch were far more fun (at times the words turned to blood and then floated away, at other times the words exploded on the screen, literally melding with the action). I can’t remember if the DVD had the same panache. Slumdog‘s subtitles were better integrated than most, but they didn’t live up to the Russians (who can). I saw Tsotsi in the theatre a few years ago. I remember walking away from the film feeling less than enthusiastic. I need to go see Synecdoche before it leaves the area; wanted to last week but I was too busy writing (among other things).
I agree completely with Mark on all scores–save for Tsotsi which I have yet to see. I can’t add much more, though I would like to defend Boyle’s busy camerawork. I thought it was refreshing, not busy at all. Some really beautiful shots, like the extremely high shot of Salim and Jamal running from the police. You see nothing but rooftops except in one small part of the frame, where the little figures of the two boys dart by. And here’s another film Boyle borrows from: Curtiz’s Angels With Dirty Faces.
Anil Kapoor is wonderful. Soundtrack is awesome.
This is a good film, and we should be happy it was made. Jeff, please join me. I’ll be waiting for you at the train station every day at 5:15 until you come.
I’ll meet you at that train station, but first I must rush out and buy a beautiful scarf.
And according to Salman Rushdie: “I’m not a very big fan of Slumdog Millionaire. I think it’s visually brilliant. But I have problems with the story line. I find the storyline unconvincing. It just couldn’t happen. I’m not adverse to magic realism but there has to be a level of plausibility, and I felt there were three or four moments in the film where the storyline breached that rule. And I’m the only person who thinks this.â€
No Salman, Mark and Jeff are right behind you!
I pronounce a fatwa against all of you, then.
ouch
Yep. Looks like City of God; plays like Annie: the Musical. Though White’s comparison (Baz Luhrmann doing Oliver Twist) is also funny.
i’m afraid i have to join salman rushdie, jeff and mark in the “enjoyed it but don’t quite get the fuss” camp. i liked the central implausible premise: using the “how does jamal know the answers” question to paint a vivid and broad social picture, but there are other things that are implausible in a different kind of way. for example, language. it’s one thing for the lower-class characters to speak english to each other (we could say the movie is translating their utterances into english so as to avoid too much subtitling); but how the hell does jamal converse with the french and american tourists? when did he take time out from his slumdog life to learn to read and write in english? this kind of thing bugs me. if you want to say something interesting about indian society you can’t do it by wishing away one of its central, defining characteristics: the way language slices class and joins and separates social realities.
i enjoyed the first half of the film a lot, but found myself looking at my watch a lot after that. the second half could have made the film if it had focussed on jamal and salim, and the half-hearted point it makes in the very end about the different paths they both take to success, but instead we get this wan love-story.
i’m left wondering more than a little about the film’s success in the u.s. well, not so much the success, but the critical plaudits. it’s a crowd-pleaser sure, but this is no great movie. i agree with mark: tsotsi kicks its ass. is this just a flash in the pan, saying nothing more about american interest in things indian than the success of il postino a decade ago did about american interest in things spanish? or is this the obverse of the call-center backlash? and would the film have sold as well to middle-american viewers if they hadn’t spent a long time glued to scenes of the terrorist attacks on mumbai in november?
(mark, unfortunately, the torture scenes are among the things in the film that are entirely plausible; the indian police has an easy-going attitude to these things, especially where people without rich and powerful parents are concerned.)
Arnab, why are you afraid to join everyone on your list? And why does it exclude me? I thought I was pretty clear that I agreed completely with Mark. This was a good film. Happy it was made and happy to have seen it. But apart from a few kind words about the camera work, there was not much I could add.
Well, I guess I can stand being excluded by Arnab. But not by Jeff. Jeff! I’m waiting for you Jeff! Where are you Jeff???
did someone say something?
I’m the one with the scar and the sultry looks.
Poverty Porn or Lust for Life?
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – “Slumdog Millionaire” is not perfect, director Danny Boyle said on Wednesday, adding no filmmaker could capture the essence of a bustling city like Mumbai in a single project.
“I have to admit, absolutely admit, that it’s not perfect. I don’t think any filmmaker can ever capture that city,” the British director said at a press conference in New Delhi.
“It’s an extraordinary city with all its extremes. You hope to capture bits of it if you can. That’s what we tried to do.”
“Slumdog Millionaire” came under fire from parts of the Indian media, who accused Boyle of romanticizing slums and peddling begging rackets, prostitution and crime as “Indian exotica.”
The film has sparked a debate on whether such “poverty porn” reinforces Western stereotypes about the country, though Boyle said he was trying to capture Mumbai’s “lust for life.”
Boyle, known for his unconventional story-telling in films like “Trainspotting,” said it was his “bedrock” of realism that helped him make “Slumdog.”
“We’ve lost the ability to tell extremes within conventional realistic stories with believable everyday characters,” the 52-year-old filmmaker said, adding that is what he had tried to achieve in “Slumdog.”
Boyle said he would love to return to Mumbai some day to direct a “really dark thriller.”
“It’s got that landscape really and it’s not obviously architecture so much — it’s more its people.”
“Slumdog Millionaire” opens in Indian cinemas on Friday, a day after this year’s Oscar nominations are revealed.
jeff, it would be great if you could provide links to these stories (i found the rushdie quote’s source by googling).
What is John going on about? joining what? aren’t we all ONE here?
Reuters.
namrata joshi has an interesting take in outlook.
and she looks at the indian reaction as well:
All of this is interesting, and it makes me wonder two things: 1. What is wrong with this movie? 2. And what is right with this movie?
Why do some people (most of us included) dislike it? I’ve spoken to some people who genuinely despise it. And why are the critics and the award givers so enamored with it? I have some ideas that are not entirely fleshed out, and with my non-existent knowledge of Indian filmmaking/storytelling, I don’t know if the blame should go more towards Boyle’s side, or to some possible Indian concept of true love destiny. Or maybe this is just the right formulaic cocktail of grit, sentimentality and cringe-worthy ending that give movies like this one or Crash and The Pianist undeserved glory, and Americans just can’t help but love and give awards to.
I don’t know if I’m even interested in thinking or talking about it more. As usual, the Oscar nominations mostly look like shit to me, and I am totally uninterested in them (Last year I at least had a little skin in the game with the Best Song category with Glen Hansard’s Once.
I did however re-watch the ’06 Best Pic nominee The Queen last night, which I wanted to do after seeing Frost/Nixon. Wow, I am again really impressed with that one, and look forward to Peter Morgan’s The Damned United, though I know nothing about football, it sounds like good stuff. (“…told from the perspective of Brian Clough, the new manager of Leeds United. Clough despises Leeds, its players, and the former club manager Don Revie. The club wins only one of six games in the 44 days Clough is manager, and the board of directors sacks him.” -wikipedia)
i don’t think slumdog millionaire is a bad movie. i think it is a good movie, an entertaining movie. to despise it is surely to go over the top in the other direction. i enjoyed watching it, i just don’t think it’s a great movie, or even a movie worthy of an oscar nomination. i mean, why nominate this film but not ironman, leave alone the completely snubbed the dark knight?
It’s a rousing tale of third-world urchins making happy on the city streets. What’s not to like? Though it may be set in India, the film strikes me as more the product of a Western imagination (a chimera if you will) than anything else. It’s hard to say this but I was embarrassed by the film. Perhaps I’ve read one too many essays by Said or Bhabha.
Still, I am interested in the connection between this story of “three musketeers” and the story of India’s economic growth over the last twenty years or so (is there a connection to be made and if so, what the hell is it). I’m also interested in the film’s embracement of a “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality. Is this notion of individualism as potent in India as it is in America? Also, the role of Muslims in India, and the way this film explores that population. And what about those ravaging Hindus? How does that get unpacked in the cine-boutiques of Mumbai?
Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, takes on Slumdog in this week’s Entertainment Weekly. He writes: “At a time of worldwide recession, Slumdog‘s sentimental notion that poverty can be overcome with plucky determination feels designed to camouflage unpleasant facts rather than illuminate them. If an education via the school of hard knocks really provided all the random knowledge you need to win 20 million rupees, a lot of undernourished, undereducated poor people would be much happier than they are. The idea that even if you fall in a pile of crap, you can come up smelling like a million bucks (this is not a figure of speech but an actual plot description) never seems to go out of style. And while it’s hard to resist this movie’s ardent love-conquers-all romanticism, it’s also hard to look at those Mumbai slums and then swallow the premise that getting rich is just about stick-to-itiveness. Even in a fantasy.”
you guys sure had a lot to say about this film! i liked it, just like everyone did. i would have been disposed to love it if someone had told me that the second half is a homage to bollywood love story conventions, about which i know absolutely zero. but since no one says anything about it i’ll have to find it as contrived and silly as everyone else. i did, however, love the first half. it seemed to be moving and brutal and poetic in a way that city of god doesn’t manage to be (though it does manage to be brutal). it reminded me very much of rohinton mistry’s super-brutal a fine balance, a book i wish i had never read while feeling glad that i have read it. india is not kind to its abject poor, it seems.
this is the one thing i want to add to what y’all eloquently said. the thesis of the film, it seems to me, is not exactly the individualistic credo that poverty can be overcome with pluckiness, but that systems of knowledge are constructed around a specific socio-economical population. the questions of the quiz show seemed a bit thin to me to bear this out, but, lack of realism aside, the idea is that there are some things the rich and well-placed (“lawyers, doctors, and general-knowledge wallah”) don’t know that miserable slumdogs know extremely well. and vice-versa. jamal is portrayed as neither particularly smart nor, certainly, educated. his one defining traits areniceness and a naivete. so it’s not through sheer brilliance that he manages to know all the stuff that general-knowledge wallahs don’t know. at first i imagined scenes of little jamal reading scraps of books in the huge dumps were he lived. but no, he picks up knowledge here and there because, either it’s where that specific knowledge is available to be picked up, or because it’s necessary to his survival (or, even better, because trauma branded it on his mind).
you can imagine this translated in this country as different SAT tests for middle class kids and for inner-city, poor kids.
as i said, it’s not done realistically and there are many holes, but i think this may be the theoretical center of the film.