Slumdog Millionaire
Dir: Danny Boyle
Rating: 4.0
Fox Searchlight
116 Minutes
Slumdog Millionaire is a film with impeccable timing. The entire world is in an economic crisis and here comes a film about the poorest of the poor — an orphaned Muslim boy living in the slums of Mumbai — winning the grand prize on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? It’s a story of The New American Dream: win your success with every living room in the country as your witness.
The motivation of protagonist Jamal Malik is what gives his effort an emotional center. He is an uneducated “slumdog” who only goes on TV to prove his devotion to Latika, a fellow orphan who has become the property of a local gangster. The general pitch may paint it as an uplifting success story, but Slumdog Millionaire is anything but soft. Let us not forget that director Danny Boyle is the man who made unrelentingly brutal and stylized films like Trainspotting and 28 Days Later. His newest film has more in common with Trainspotting than the average inspirational flick like Remember the Titans; the protagonist tries to outrun the cops, commits minor crimes to survive in scenes accompanied by rousing pop music (in this case, M.I.A.), and, in a moment of desperation, comes into direct contact with human waste to get what he wants. Even the film’s framing device has Jamal being tortured by the police under suspicion of cheating. Despite Boyle’s penchant for stylized, energetic cinema, he does not sugarcoat things for his audience.
Most interesting in Slumdog Millionaire is Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy’s depiction of globalization’s stranglehold on the country, expressed through the experience of the orphans. Maman, the man who takes the orphans in (only to exploit them), approaches the children with cold bottles of Coca-Cola. The brothers start making money by posing as tour guides at the Taj Mahal and confidently feed tourists the misinformation about the landmark’s history. When Jamal gets on the game show (which originally started in Britain before becoming a worldwide phenomenon), he holds a job working in an outsourced telecommunications company whose customer service reps claim to be “Just down the road” from their British customers. Even the questions on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? require Jamal to know things such as who is on the American hundred-dollar bill. And Indian culture? All reduced to the easy questions early in the game show, which Jamal only knows from life experience: a song sung by a fellow orphan beggar, a vision of Rama as his people are slaughtered in sectarian violence.
Despite the overwhelming bleakness, Slumdog Millionaire remains an uplifting story. Boyle is hardly a pessimistic filmmaker, and 28 Days Later and Sunshine are the most indicative of that: despite an outbreak of angry zombies and a desperate effort to reignite a dying sun, respectively, the films end with a sense of hope. Slumdog Millionaire is no exception, but in this case Boyle steps up his game with an energetic Bollywood-inspired dance sequence as the credits roll. Slumdog Millionaire is nothing if not a super-urban fantasy, and a highly choreographed musical number that says “…and they all lived happily ever after.”
by Danny Djeljosevic
