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A Pair Of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE Reviews!
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Readers Talkback
Hey again. I’ve written a couple reviews for your site, the most recent one being last month’s “Zack and Miri Make a Porno.” I just got back from a screening of Danny Boyle’s new film “Slumdog Millionaire.” It screened at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Westchester, NY and there was a Q/A session after the movie with Danny Boyle, the star of the film Dev Patel, and Janet Maslin of the New York Times. The last two times I’ve written in a review I’ve been called a “plant,” so hopefully this review will back up the fact that I am not a plant. Danny Boyle is a very ambitious filmmaker. It seems like with every film he makes he crosses another genre. “Sunshine,” “28 Days Later,” “Trainspotting,” “Millions,” they all had something different in them. Whether it was horror, sci-fi, love, underdogs, each movie he’s made seemed to cross into a different genre. And what’s great about him is that he can pull it off. Many directors can only do one genre, very good/great directors can do multiple genres, and Boyle here proves again that he’s at the very least a very good director. “Slumdog Millionaire” is based on a book called Q/A. The script was written by Simon Beaufoy (“The Full Monty”). The movie tells the story of how impoverished teen, or slumdog as they’re called, Jamal is at this one point in his life. And that point happens to be one question away from 20,000,000 Rupees on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” the Indian version. The movie opens up with that and then quickly cuts to him being interrogated by the police trying to get him to confess that he is a cheater. The rest of the movie tells the story of how he knew every answer to the questions that were given to him by flashing back to his childhood and how he grew up. We eventually find out he is only on the game show for one reason, and that is to find his childhood love Latika, who is a big fan of the show, as is almost everyone else in India. For just about every question he was asked, the answer had come to him in his life at some point. Whether it was knowing a famous actor, the inventor of the revolver, or who the Three Musketeers were, he had already known almost every single answer. The way the movie seamlessly flows in and out of the present and the past is what really makes this work. The writing and especially editing were very, very good, and without either of those being at the level they were this movie would’ve been a “never was” as opposed to the possible break-out film of 2008. I really believe this movie could go the way of “Juno,” “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Sideways” before it, and be the art film break out of the year and be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. The soundtrack was such a perfect complement to the film, even incorporating MIA’s “Paper Planes” in the film, big surprise but it fit very nicely. Most of it was scored by an Indian composer, who I don’t know the name of, but Boyle spoke very highly of and said is extremely popular in India. The name of the movie and even description of the movie will surely turn people off from seeing this, which is unfortunate because I believe it will be talked about a lot during the coming Awards season. I don’t want to sound too pushy, or “plant”-like, but this movie really is very good. The love story aspect, about your destiny, about it all being written, about overcoming all the odds, it’s just a movie that I really believe is a very good film and I strongly urge you to check it out if you feel like it. -The Amber Spyglass
Last night I was lucky to attend a screening of Slumdog Millionaire at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York. In attendance was director Danny Boyle, star Dev Patel, and NY Times critic Janet Maslin, who led a discussion/Q & A session after the film. I've been a huge fan of Boyle's movies from the time I received a VHS screener of Shallow Grave at the video store I worked in throughout high school and college (long gone, damn you, Blockbuster). Since then I've seen all his films in theaters and, with a few exceptions (The Beach and much of A Life Less Ordinary), have enjoyed them all. By now I'm guessing the general premise is familiar to most people, so I won't go into too much detail. The film begins just after Jamal Malik, an orphan from the slums of India, has advanced to the final question on the Hindi version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. As the crowd explodes, the scene freezes and the audience is provided a Millionaire-style question: whether Jamal won because: A) he is lucky B) he is a genius C) he cheated D) it is written. We then cut to scenes of Jamal being tortured by the local authorities, who suspect he has found a way to cheat, despite the show's rigid monitoring of its contestants. For the rest of the film, Jamal explains to the chief inspector (the actor played the father in The Namesake) how it was possible for him to know the answers to such difficult questions (in one of the film's cleverer moves, the questions won't seem particularly hard to Western audiences). To do so, Jamal must tell his life's story, as evey one of the answers can be traced back to a key event in his life. The manner in which his story unfolds is pretty remarkable; although most of the story is essentially one big flashback, it never feels like one. Distant past, recent past and present play off of one another almost seamlessly, echoing one another in ways that are humorous, surprising and, on a few occasions, absolutely devastating. Okay, cutting to the chase, I think that this is Boyle's best film by an enormous margin and one that deserves to find a huge audience. People will respond strongly to Slumdog Millionaire as both a love story and the ultimate rags-to-riches tale. Roughly a quarter of the film is in Hindi, but even those people who claim they hate subtitled films would probably love this if they gave it the chance. What I was most thankful for, though, is that the most horrific aspects of Jamal's childhood have not been softened in order to make the film an easier one for audiences to sit through. Many people will compare the first half Slumdog to City of God. Visually they have a lot in common, including dizzying, vibrant use of color and ever-roaming camerawork. Having fully transported us to a world we've never seen, neither film allows us to look away when we most want to. Without showing us the absolute worst that Jamal must endure, his rewards would have been nowhere near as uplifiting as they ultimately are. Personally, I liked the way that Slumdog Millionaire incorporated so many familiar elements of Boyle's past films (in the post-movie discussion he claimed this was not intentional, an only occured to him as he began to marked the film). Like Millions, the film relies heavily on a child's perspective and lets religion influence a major character's course of action (in this case, Jamal's brother, a hitman's assistant with a conscience). The crowd scenes in the streets of Mumbai called to mind the opening scenes of The Beach, and as in most of Boyle's films, blaring pop music is dominant in key scenes (a few of which look to have been edited to the music on the soundtrack). Oh yeah, there's also an early flashback to Jamal's childhood that makes Ewan McGregor's climbing into a toilet bowl seem downright sanitary. I'm really looking forward to seeing this one again. NotaryDPO
