If indie director Danny Boyle had known that his modest film would rake in millions at the box office and win brownie points at every award ceremony with its shameless display of poverty porn, he'd have surely struck that exalted jig in a putrid pile of shit instead of his igominable six year old protaganist and scream 'Jai Ho!' in his cutesy British accent.
Like Vikas Swarup's Q&A, Slumdog Millionaire is a one trick pony where the screenplay is an episodic apology as to how a Call centre chai-walla could get all the questions right at the Karod-potty show after getting his toes nicely twiddled by electric jolts the night before. Granted that the film had to be shot exclusively in Mumbai's dirtiest underbelly to underline the harshness and hostility of life in a slum, why did Danny Bhai have to shoot India's most famous monument with the same 'creative vision'? The first shot of the Taj from across the sludge on the banks of the Yamuna is unforgiving to say the least.
But momentarily resurrected National pride aside- I have two other problems with the much celebrated SlumDawg.
One- Simon Beaufoy's screenplay holds no intrigue because of an obvious framing problem. Right from the start, you know that the grimy, scrawny urchin Jamaal who metamorphosizes into chikna Dev Patel is going to get not just the last question, but every friggin question right on the karod-potty show. That's like knowing that a double-fisted hero is going to win every street-fight (with single punches too) before he gets to bash up the main villian in his den. How utterly predictable is that? You're also dished out anomalies like an impromptu riot brought in (without explanation or resolution) just to justify how an uneducated muslim child could know about hindu religious symbolism and sexual come-uppence between teenage brothers to justify the remembrance of the revolver's inventor. The three slumkids around whom the entire film revolves keep falling into one life-threatening/ gut-wrenching calamity after another but manage to somehow escape to unexplained obscurity-only till their destinies conveniently collide in accordance with the lame-ass questions on Anil Kapoor's quiz-show monitor. Suspension of disbelief and a naive Alice in Underworld vision is one thing; a disjointed narrative and exploitative socio-cultural pickings are another.
Two- Danny Boyle decides to toss the issue of Language as a key to cultural identity to the winds. Like most other Phoren film makers who've dared to venture into India-exotica to shoot their jewels in the crown, he deals with the issue by disregarding it totally. As a result, Jamaal the multilingual slumkid speaks in street-lingo (hindi) in his first two (more absorbing) avatars but switches to stiff Brit upper lip quips as a suit-boot Dev Patel. Ditto for his lady love Latika(Frieda Pinto) and older brother Salim(Madhur Mittal).
Pardon my questioning the verisimilitude, but isn't speaking in English supposed to be the passport to a life that's actually beyond the clutches of these impoverished urchins?
Without a doubt, this overhyped film is an angrez-aadmi's 'vision' of Mumbai and Maadher-India not how he sees it, but how he would like it stitched together in two hours for maximum mileage in whatever quarters the cow's worth milking. And it owes its success abroad to its clever extension of the idea of poverty-tourism, some excellent slum-casting by Loveleen Tandon, bare-to-the-bone cinematography by Anthony Mantle and ultimately the newness factor of its cross-genre theme.
Even without Rahman's peppy music-that's an awful lot of things to get right.
Like Vikas Swarup's Q&A, Slumdog Millionaire is a one trick pony where the screenplay is an episodic apology as to how a Call centre chai-walla could get all the questions right at the Karod-potty show after getting his toes nicely twiddled by electric jolts the night before. Granted that the film had to be shot exclusively in Mumbai's dirtiest underbelly to underline the harshness and hostility of life in a slum, why did Danny Bhai have to shoot India's most famous monument with the same 'creative vision'? The first shot of the Taj from across the sludge on the banks of the Yamuna is unforgiving to say the least.
But momentarily resurrected National pride aside- I have two other problems with the much celebrated SlumDawg.
One- Simon Beaufoy's screenplay holds no intrigue because of an obvious framing problem. Right from the start, you know that the grimy, scrawny urchin Jamaal who metamorphosizes into chikna Dev Patel is going to get not just the last question, but every friggin question right on the karod-potty show. That's like knowing that a double-fisted hero is going to win every street-fight (with single punches too) before he gets to bash up the main villian in his den. How utterly predictable is that? You're also dished out anomalies like an impromptu riot brought in (without explanation or resolution) just to justify how an uneducated muslim child could know about hindu religious symbolism and sexual come-uppence between teenage brothers to justify the remembrance of the revolver's inventor. The three slumkids around whom the entire film revolves keep falling into one life-threatening/ gut-wrenching calamity after another but manage to somehow escape to unexplained obscurity-only till their destinies conveniently collide in accordance with the lame-ass questions on Anil Kapoor's quiz-show monitor. Suspension of disbelief and a naive Alice in Underworld vision is one thing; a disjointed narrative and exploitative socio-cultural pickings are another.
Two- Danny Boyle decides to toss the issue of Language as a key to cultural identity to the winds. Like most other Phoren film makers who've dared to venture into India-exotica to shoot their jewels in the crown, he deals with the issue by disregarding it totally. As a result, Jamaal the multilingual slumkid speaks in street-lingo (hindi) in his first two (more absorbing) avatars but switches to stiff Brit upper lip quips as a suit-boot Dev Patel. Ditto for his lady love Latika(Frieda Pinto) and older brother Salim(Madhur Mittal).
Pardon my questioning the verisimilitude, but isn't speaking in English supposed to be the passport to a life that's actually beyond the clutches of these impoverished urchins?
Without a doubt, this overhyped film is an angrez-aadmi's 'vision' of Mumbai and Maadher-India not how he sees it, but how he would like it stitched together in two hours for maximum mileage in whatever quarters the cow's worth milking. And it owes its success abroad to its clever extension of the idea of poverty-tourism, some excellent slum-casting by Loveleen Tandon, bare-to-the-bone cinematography by Anthony Mantle and ultimately the newness factor of its cross-genre theme.
Even without Rahman's peppy music-that's an awful lot of things to get right.
Couldn't agree with you more....
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