Slumdog taps into Western curiosity about a country whose weight is increasingly felt in ordinary lives, writes Sadanand Dhume in Yale Global Online
The unexpected international success of “Slumdog Millionaire” has pleased some Indians while provoking unusually strong protests from others. The critical and commercial success of the film, contrasted with sharp criticism and a lackluster run in Indian theaters, captures the inherent contradictions of an increasingly globalized country. India basks in the glow of international recognition, but resents the critical scrutiny that global exposure brings.
Not since Sir Richard Attenborough’s “Gandhi” has a film about India captured the world’s imagination as strongly as “Slumdog Millionaire,” director Danny Boyle’s gritty yet uplifting drama about a boy from the slums of Mumbai who makes good as a game-show contestant on the Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” The low-budget production – which cost $15 million to make, a pittance in Hollywood terms – has garnered both commercial and critical success, grossing $96 million worldwide as of February 1st, and picking up four Golden Globe awards and 10 Oscar nominations. In one among a raft of glowing reviews, Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern hailed “Slumdog” as “the world’s first globalized masterpiece.”
Danny Boyle’s new film ‘Slumdog Millionaire‘ will close this year’s London Film Festival. Adapted by ‘Full Monty‘ writer Simon Beaufoy from the novel ‘Q&A‘ by Vikas Swarup, ‘Slumdog Millionaire‘ tells the story of an an 18-year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai who finds himself just one question away from winning 20 million rupees ($500,000) on India’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”
Danny Boyle’s (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later and Sunshine) movie features an all-Indian cast including Skins star Dev Patel and Anil Kapoor. Boyle filmed ‘Slumdog millionaire’ on location on the streets of Mumbai. Music is by AR Rehman. In a story headlined “Will Slumdog Millionaire be 2008’s Juno,” the New York Observer says it is already being positioned as 2008’s “little movie that could.”
Driven by fantastic energy and a torrent of vivid images of India old and new, “Slumdog Millionaire” is a blast. Danny Boyle’s film uses the dilemma of a poor teenager suspected of cheating on the local version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” to tell a story of social mobility that is positively Dickensian in its attention to detail and the extremes of poverty and wealth within a culture…
Surging with colors, music, the ever-present swarming multitudes and the vitality of its youthful characters, the pic begins disturbingly with the sight of police torturing a young man to make him confess how he’s been able to make a run up to the ultimate prize of 20 million rupees on the nation’s most popular quizshow. “I knew the answers,” the sullen fellow insists, and Simon Beaufoy’s intricate and cleverly structured script illustrates how that came to be.
The Pool: Another world, just over the hedge
Director Chris Smith’s (American Job, The Yes Men, American Movie) movie “The Pool” takes a look at the lives of the haves and the someday might haves in Goa. A poor boy (Venkatesh Chavan) becomes obsessed with the swimming pool of a rich man (Nana Patekar) in the opulent hills of Panjim, Goa. His life gets turned upside down when he attempts to meet the mysterious family that arrives at the house. Smith transfers an Iowa-based short story by Randy Russell to India’s western Goa region -- and works in Hindi. From the New York Times:
In “The Pool,” a recurrent image that develops into a symbol of the gap between affluence and poverty shows the waiflike Indian protagonist, Venkatesh (Venkatesh Chavan), perched in a tree, gazing longingly at a private swimming pool on the other side of a hedge. A skinny, 18-year-old man-child who longs to dive into the water, Venkatesh ekes out a living cleaning hotel rooms and selling plastic bags on the street with his 11-year-old sidekick, Jhangir (Jhangir Badshah). The shimmering pool, in which no one seems to swim, is a window onto a world he can hardly imagine.
This calm, neorealist film, directed and photographed by the documentarian Chris Smith (“American Movie,” “The Yes Men,” “American Job”), blurs the line between fiction and reality. As the characters, who have the same first names as the actors playing them, amble around Panaji, the capital of Goa, you come to see them more as people living their lives than as a writer’s inventions.
