Slumdog Millionaire

Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire has put Indian film buffs in a tizzy by bagging almost every award on offer, including a staggering 8 Oscars. This neo-realistic romantic tale about Jamal, who grows up on the wrong side of the tracks, yet pursues with an astonishingly single-minded devotion his love interest, Latika, and eventually makes it big in a game show - ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, ’ an adapted version of ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati.’

This fast-paced tale straddles different time zones and settings, making the ‘Slumdog’ a non-linear narrative that manages to keep the interest levels alive throughout, and importantly does not spin a web of confusion in the bargain. Music is by A R Rahman, who won two Oscars and deserves the recognition he got, albeit the music for this movie is not among the best he has produced so far. (Jai Ho! to the Gulzar-Rahman Oscar winning team for the best sound-track.) It’s not just for music but Resul Pookutty joins Rahman in winning an Oscar for sound mixing, an acknowledgement of home-grown technical talent.      

         Adapted to the big screen by Simon Beaufoy the script is based on Vikas Swarup’s novel ‘Q&A’. The story is a familiar one. Poor kids from the slum left to fend for themselves overcome every challenge they face with panache. The rag to riches undertone does accentuate the incredible survival instincts of the many enterprising ‘slummers’ who populate the underbelly of India’s metros. Ingenuity of Jamal and his brother Salim in meeting life’s challenges is endearing, but at the same time leaves you feeling very uncomfortable. A poignant moment is when Jamal gets caught for posing as a tourist-guide and is thrashed. He suggests to the foreign tourists that his agony is the actual face of real India and not the Taj or even what the IT engineers have come to represent. The tourist (presumably from the USA) hands out a few dollar bills and speaks for the western consciousness pricked by the third world’s helplessness, that her act is what the real West’s response has always been... doles of all sorts to mitigate the burden the white man carries.     A subtle guessing game is also interwoven into the movie’s lattice. While Jamal is fending questions both at the game show and in the police station, his earlier life is shown in a flashback, which serendipitously seems to contain answers to the very questions he is being asked. Jamal confesses to the inspector with a philosophical nugget that only when a question is asked he will answer, hinting that life’s endless stream of questions can be only answered by life’s experiences. The audience however is eternally kept on the edge… waiting, because Jamal keeps losing Latika, just when they look set to finally ride into the sunset.
 
Is Slumdog Millionaire a consummate movie worth so many Oscars and awards? The question or even the answer for that matter is debatable. It raises however, several other ethical and moral questions. Does the road for a ‘slumdog’ pass through sleaze and crime? Is Jamal an exception that establishes the rule? What about the Azhar and Rubaina who portray the younger versions of the protagonists, who are actually from a slum in Mumbai known as Gahribnagar, will they get over their poverty and make it like Jamal? Given the predicaments what Slumdog Millionaire has achieved is to unite a nation, starved of good news what with gloomy clouds of economic hardships hovering about, something to cheer and celebrate.