As a movie critic I might not be your first choice. I venture to the cinema on average about once every two years at this point in my life. And I do not rent a lot of films, maybe a couple a year. I do watch the occasional movie on TV.
I just came back from seeing Slumdog Millionaire, and if you are any sort of movie fan I would put this movie in the “must see” category. It was rightly nomimated for Best Picture for the 2009 Academy Awards.
First, it is an excellent story. It intertwines episodes of the India version of Who wants to be a Millionaire with the story of 3 Mumbai (Bombay was the colonial name of this city) street orphans. Both story lines kept me on the edge of my seat.
Secondly, it gives a view of India that perhaps we normally do not get to see. Certainly it is a view that we do not want to see or think about. To see/imagine humans living in those conditions is hard for this mind, encased in a body living in a first world country, to contemplate. There were orphaned kids running loose in the streets, sleeping where they could, picking through dumps for sustenance. There was a general disregard for life and unbelievable hardship depicted.
Mumbai, with a population density of almost 30,000 people per square kilometre, is the world’s most crowded city.
I’ve put an email into to an Indian friend of mine to see how close this is to reality, and how much was the movie. I’m betting it is pretty close to the reality of India.
There is violence in this movie. There were 2 or 3 parts where I just had to close my eyes. I could not watch what was about to transpire on the screen. There was some language. Both the violence and the language were not gratuitous like some films out today. They were an integral part of the story.
Ultimately, it is a story of love, hope, self redemption and perseverance against odds. You alternate between being appalled by their living conditions, admiring of their ingenuity, and rooting for a happy ending.
Do yourself a huge favor and go see this movie.
For more information visit the IMDB page for this movie
8 Oscars…I guess the voters at the Academy thought it worthy.
The last thing I want to sit through is another “poor India” movie. Not my idea of entertainment. They’re getting enough money sent back home to them now things should be improving. If they aren’t it isn’t because the American worker hasn’t sacrificed enough. Now I’m hearing from Indian workers how they should automatically get 4 weeks vacation because they have to go back home. I got a good idea. Just go back home and stay!
I have been trying to write a review on Slumdog millionaire since watching it last weekend.
But however hard I try to be positive, the review ends up trashing the movie.
I did not enjoy the movie…. It was so fake, unrealistic.. and just too flawed.
That said, I did think the story had all the right elements to tug at the audience’s heart strings. Poor people, destitute kids, boy meets gal, the under dog being dealt an unfair hand by destiny making us all to root for the underdog to finally get together with the love of his life…. [And there was even a bone thrown for the religious folks in the western Hemisphere – A scene of Hindu mob attacking “poor Muslims” especially Muslim kids and Muslim women.. … ]
Finally, the vehicle that brings them together is also the brain dead “Who wants to be a millionaire” which the western audience love and identify with . After all, who does NOT dream about becoming one. But the “game” in the movie does not stop at a million. Anyone can see that flaw. As someone who lived in Mumbai – who decries the many serious issues that the city has, I could see flaws like that all thru the movie. After a while I stopped being critical and tried to enjoy the “love story” but just couldn’t.
The movie is not all wrong. Many of the issues the movie highlights are very real to Mumbai .. [and I should point out, alien to the most of India].
The movie was flawed. I do know if it deserved even a single Oscar. It definitely did NOT deserve the 8 or so it ended up receiving.
From a friends email:
Anyway, below is a review that a friend of mine back home sent me a link to. Apparently it was in some online blog/site. I haven’t read it before, so I do not know how popular or mainstream it is. But I agree .. at some level … with his comments about the movie. However he gets a bit carried away towards the end with some populist trash talking talking and I wish he had not, coz it detracts from the rest of his critique.
Arindam Chaudhuri in The Sunday Indian
http://arindamchaudhuri.blogspot.com/search?q=slumdog
Don’t see “Slumdog Millionaire”. It sucks!
A phony poseur that has been made only to mock India for the viewing pleasure of the First World!!
The emperor’s new clothes! That’s “Slumdog Millionaire” for you… Five minutes into this celebrated patchwork of illogical clichés and you are struck by the jarring dialogues. The cumbersome delivery in a language which doesn’t come naturally to most of the actors sounds like someone scratching on walls with one’s finger nails; it ruins the possibility of a connection… Had this film been made by an Indian director, it would’ve been trashed as a rotting old hat, which literally stands out only because of its stench, but since the man making it happens to be from the West, we’re all left celebrating the emperor’s new clothes. The film borrows an undoubtedly interesting narrative style – from films like “City of God” – but then uses it to weave in a collection of clichés from the Third World’s underbelly for the viewing pleasure of a First World audience. The real slumdog in the movie is not the main protagonist but India as a whole… The makers and those celebrating this movie’s hard-to-spot brilliance are actually serving up India as the accidental millionaire, which in fact happens to be a slumdog… and like shameless fools we are gloating over its success without realising that it makes a caricature out of India.
The film does not have the sincerity and honesty of a “Salaam Bombay” or a “City of Joy” and nor does this slime covered fairy tale have the integrity or the rootedness of the above mentioned scripts, or even a “Shantaram” for that matter; the soundtrack and the performance of the child actors are the only bits in the film which live up to the hype. The real slumdogs who’ve hit the jackpot after wallowing in acres of human waste are the makers of this film who are now raking in millions while those court jesters who’ve critiqued the film and showered tributes and awards need to ask themselves why, scores of years after our independence, they still feel the need to suck up to the gora sahibs. It’s not a question of xenophobia… it’s definitely a well cinematographed film… but the film has no soul, especially after little Jamal has jumped off the train and become a teenager… The rest of the film is just a modern version of the West’s view of India where slums, slumdogs and Bollywoodian clichés have replaced the elephants and snake charmers. It’s a well made caricature of a country and a caricature can never be a Mona Lisa, for a masterpiece can’t be one dimensional juxtaposition of sadistic extremes… and that’s my grouse with the celebrations…
And I say all this not because I don’t know what is India. I know its poverty and the real statistics around it a little better than most others – especially the Indian film critics who have given “Slumdog…” an average of 4 to 4.5 stars! But the fact is that the film’s entire narration seems like the germination of a terribly sadistic and complex mind with the sole aim of satisfying the western idea of India – and its new found growth instincts at their cost – and it is done through a combination of illogical happenings in order to show everything in a disgustingly negative vein. Not that it doesn’t exist, but it surely doesn’t exist in this fictitious manner. While “Salaam Bombay” had realism, “Slumdog…” is just every scrap of dirt picked up from every corner and piled up together to try and hit back at the growing might of India. And the awards almost seem like a sadistic effort to show the world – look we knew that this was India, and these are the slumdogs we are outsourcing our jobs to. It stinks of racial arrogance and it’s such a shame now on second thought to see the Indian faces – including that of the undoubted master, AR Rahman – celebrating its success. There is nothing positive about the film and it seems that a deranged sadist has painted his insecure negative self in each and every character of the movie. It illogically shows every negative thing about India happening in the protagonist’s life… slums, open-air lavatories, riots, underworld, prostitution, brothels, child labour, begging, blinding and maiming of kids to make them into ‘better beggars’, petty peddlers, traffic jams, irresponsible call centre executives… everything apart from western pedophiles roaming around in Indian streets!! And its winning of so many awards and nominations only goes on to prove strongly that the paradigm of cinema and recognition of films are in the hands of a few retarded imperialistic minds. It’s a crying shame that our media hasn’t seen through this ruse and is touting “Slumdog’s” nominations to claim that India is shining at the Oscars, while in fact it is lauding a film that mocks and ridicules the idea of ‘India’, pigeonholing its identity into the straitjacket of depraved poverty for a global audience.
When the West wanted Indians to embrace them and their companies to come to India and capture the lucrative markets, suddenly we had all the Indian women, some very beautiful and some not necessarily so, winning all the Miss Universe and Miss Worlds. Today, they are in a crisis and India is looking unstoppable despite its slums and poverty, and they are losing their businesses to us. Isn’t it the best time to paint India as the Slumdog Millionaire?? All in all, the film is nothing but an endorsement of an erstwhile imperial mindset of the West and its blinkered vision of India. An English master has made an Indian slumdog. Don’t even waste your time watching this film in the theatres. It sucks and there is nothing great in it as a film too. Amitabh Bachchan was spot on when he said that Bollywood has made far better mainstream films. Take out a DVD of one of his old films instead…
I read the scathing review of the movie on your website. I agree with some of the points. But in the midst of reading this, for some reason, I suddenly remembered the movie Oliver. Poor kid, living in horrible conditions….. Is it more acceptable to make a unflattering movie about the past than the present?