The phenomenon called Slumdog Millionaire

What do you get when a director with a penchant for the grotesque takes the premise of a bestseller, wraps it in the setting from another bestseller, bastes it with Bollywood flavours, spices it with irresistible visuals & music and rounds it off with a casting that carries off the whole ensemble with panache rarely seen from established actors?

You get Slumdog Millionaire. A joyous, at times gory but always entertaining, Bollywoodesque ode to destiny, friendship and love.

Several thousand words have already been written about Slumdog Millionaire in the form of reviews, blog posts, etc. I do not plan to review the movie here. Far more eloquent writers have done that already. These are just my thoughts on what made Slumdog… a worldwide phenomenon – a hands-down winner at the Golden Globes and a prime candidate for Oscar glory.

To begin with, Slumdog Millionaire is based on the premise of Vikas Swarup’s Q and A. It’s the classic rags-to-riches story that has us rooting for the underdog. But it is worth noting that it’s only the premise of the book that has found its way into the movie. Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a slumdog, chai-wallah, musketeer… bred in poverty, on the verge of a Rs. 20 mn windfall on “Who wants to be a millionaire?” has to justify how he could answer diverse questions that could have flummoxed even highly educated “doctors and lawyers”. It is in his justifications that the movie deviates from the book. I felt Q and A was too grim and laid too much emphasis on sexual exploitation that had a movie faithfully followed its plot, it would have succeeded in shocking the audience but would have achieved little else. Simon Beaufoy brilliantly adapts the premise into a screenplay that retains the essence of exploitation and struggle but adds a comedic drama of love around the idea… a drama that carries the audience towards the tumultuously uplifting finalé.

While the movie has some fine performances from its cast, one of the most enduring characters from the movie is the city of Mumbai. Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy reportedly drew inspiration from Suketu Mehta’s “Maximum City to portray the “real” Mumbai. Together with Dod Mantle, the cinematographer, they have recreated the pulsating underbelly of Mumbai on screen. True, the movie largely depicts squalor and poverty, at times dipping (quite literally) into the slushy depths of hell. But what always shines through is the never-say-die attitude and the virtues of friendship and love. And for this reason, I do not agree with Amitabh Bachchan’s criticism of the movie’s portrayal of poverty (and the supposed implication that all of India was a poor Third World country). Because by that yardstick, we could easily say that India was made up of coolies (from Bachchan’s own Coolie and Hum). And more importantly, the underdog and rags-to-riches themes are what earned Mr. Bachchan his immortal “angry young man” fame.

What also works for the movie are the performances. Dev Patel, even though it stretches credulity to think of him as a slum kid, gives a standout performance as Jamal Malik. Freida Pinto as the evanescent Latika, Madhur Mittal as the practical Salim, Irfan Khan as the smart police inspector and Anil Kapoor as the slimy superstar game show host Prem Kumar… all of them give good performances. But what hits home is the fact that as far as worldwide audiences are concerned, these are all unknowns (except Irfan Khan and to some extent Dev Patel) and so the performances come as pleasant revelations. And the kid actors, real-life slum-kids themselves, are in one word, “brilliant”!!

Even though Slumdog Millionaire’s soundtrack is not AR Rahman’s finest, the very fact that he has won the Golden Globe for it and is in contention for the Oscars, speaks volumes about Rahman’s genius. The soundtrack is cleverly Bollywood mainstream, but tweaked enough to appeal to the global audiences.

I do not want to sound like a fanboy of the movie because I am not. The movie’s hardly perfect and there are instances that made me go, “Ahem!”. For example, the kids are too young to be reading/studying “The Three Musketeers” in school. They drop out of school at too young an age to readily speak fluent English while conversing with foreign tourists. They always escape way too easily with ruthless criminals chasing them. Well, you get the picture. But to dwell on these things would be to miss the point. The movie crams romance, thrills, comedy, loss, serious drama, satire, social commentary, songs & dance and whatnot, in a two hour capsule. It is a celebration of Bollywood masala genre for the western audiences and needs to be seen as such.

Everybody loves an underdog. Especially when the underdog defies the odds and comes up trumps. For a large part, Sumdog Millionaire is a journey through the school of hard knocks. So even though the movie’s climax is predictable, you end up rooting, cheering for the underdog Jamal, as his fortune (in more ways than one) hangs in balance. And what more could a director ask for when the crowd leaves the auditorium with the feel-good chant “Jai Ho!” in their hearts!

If you want a recommendation from me, I’d recommend that you watch this movie. Not because its about Mumbai, not because it’s based on a bestseller, not because it has won awards, not even because of the success of it’s unlikely ensemble cast. But because it’s a great entertainer. And that is all. After all, it is written.