“So, are you ready for the final questions for 20 million rupees?”
“No … But maybe it is written, no?”
I was more than a little bit late to the game on “Slumdog Millionaire,” as it was hard not to miss the critical acclaim it received and the boatload of awards it took home along the way -- eight Oscars, including biggies like Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. So I was eagerly anticipating finally getting a chance to check it out recently, and I definitely wasn’t disappointed or underwhelmed.
After viewing this flick, let’s just say you won’t want to go on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” -- unless you enjoy being tortured by Regis every morning anyway (*rim shot*). However, this was a brilliant technique, to unveil the plot and unfold the story through Jamal’s answers on a quiz show. From having their souls stolen for the price of a Coke, to an amazing, Dickensian journey to the depths of darkness, to found love, Jamal and his older brother, Salam, unknowingly are chasing the same dream -- the unattainable, misunderstood, untouchable girl, Latika -- until it costs one of them everything.
This film certainly covered a lot of ground and tackled a lot of taboo subjects, making it a very brave and fearless work of art. Director Danny Boyle didn’t pull any punches in his depiction of Mumbai, the horrors of the slums, child slavery, forced mutilation, and the region’s sometimes-subhuman approach to violence and corruption. An adaptation of a novel titled “Q & A” by Vikas Swarup (that’s a cool name), the movie was controversial for how it portrayed Mumbai’s slums, but to be honest, that usually means it was pretty (and almost too) accurate. The use of British English (it’s a bloody British film, after all) and the welfare of the child actors were other controversies that arose in the swell of this movie’s sudden and unexpected rise in popularity. Also, “Slumdog Millionaire” was considered by a vocal minority in the blogosphere to be a ripoff of “City of God,” but I haven’t seen that one, so I really can’t comment. But “Seinfeld” star Salman Rushdie also reportedly panned it, so maybe the flick eventually suffered from becoming too popular, a fate suffered often in the music industry.
When you push the controversies aside and place performances in the forefront, Dev Patel was tremendous as (older) Jamal. The final scene where Jamal and Latika finally find each other is extremely emotional, with the flashbacks interspliced among the frenzy to locate each other in a crowded station. Then, there was a slightly odd dance number at the end (there were any number of interesting musical choices throughout the film), but I have it on high authority that every movie should end with a group dance scene, preferably in a subway.
I’m not sure “Slumdog Millionaire” was a great film, but it was a combination of so different and so good that it was pretty darn close. Perhaps Boyle was a tad too ambitious in the sheer number of social ills that his movie seeks to bring to light, but if that’s the worst thing you can say about a flick, it can’t be all bad, eh? Maybe this one was a tremendous tale moreso than a tremendous movie, but that may also be just splitting hairs. In the end, “Slumdog” resonates somewhere deeper than most superficial movies are able to reach -- and sometimes that’s all it takes.
Sometimes that’s enough to make just a bit of magic.
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