Merrick here...


Danny Boyle's SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, described by IMDB as "The story of how impoverished Indian teen Jamal Malik became a contestant on the Hindi version of Who Wants to be A Millionaire? - an endeavor made without prize money in mind, rather, an effort to prove his love for his friend Latika, who is an ardent fan of the show", is now in limited release (has been for a few weeks now - see if it's in your area yet via THE FILM'S OFFICIAL SITE).

We've received many reviews of this film, and read a great deal about this project in the press, but not too much attention has been paid to how an Indian might perceive the movie.

Parth, who grew up "in a small, one-movie-hall town in western part of India", sent in a thoughtful assessment of SLUMDOG. We thought you might find it interesting...


Here's Parth...

Having grown up up in a small, one-movie-hall town in western part of
India, movies, and in particular Bollywood movies, have been a big
part of my early life. Those movies are now a part of the memory that
is reserved by Indian expatriates to miss and despise alternatively.

I had been looking forward to Slumdog Millionaire for quite a while. I
had a chance to see it last night....

Say you are in the East Village and you feel like eating Indian food.
You can walk to the block of Sixth Street between Second and First
avenues. There are about eight Indian restaurants there. All of them
have what an authentic Indian restaurant in the West is supposed to
have: the look of cheap sophistication, people standing outside trying
to lure you in—"Yes please sir, welcome sir, great food sir," and
sometimes old Sikh uncles playing sitar. You choose one and try the
food. Now, if you go to the East Village often and feel like eating
Indian food often and go to one of those authentic restaurants often,
you find something strange. The only good Indian food in that entire
block is served by a British chain restaurant—Brick Lane Curry House.
It looks clean and well maintained and the food has the (more or less)
right balance of spices. Having grown up watching Bollywood movies,
that is exactly how I felt after watching Slumdog Millionaire.

Most Indian movies are fairy tales, and fairy tales in popular culture
are for two things: to highlight a moral value and escape the burdens
of reality. Both of these have been the driving forces in the majority
of our Hindi movies. They tried to induce morality but worked because
of the escapism. We love our escapism. We would believe anything.
People dancing on the street? Yes. The hero taking in a dozen bullets
and driving to the next city in time for his wife's delivery? Yes. A
beautiful woman lying on alpine snows wearing nothing but a red silk
sari? Oh, yeah. A thirty-five-year-old actor playing a college
student? Check. Bad actors with big biceps becoming huge stars? Yes.
It's like we have been in the 80s for the last 40 years.

We don't mind if our stories or dialogues are corny. Subtlety in
Bollywood is like modesty in corporate America. The most famous lines
from Bollywood movies have been the cheesiest. Our biggest stars have
been those who have were man enough to deliver the cheesiest line
without losing the swagger. Remember, if you deliver your goods with
enough passion, even the corniest material is tolerable for a short
time. Remember Bruce Springsteen prancing around on stage with his
sleeves rolled up in the Glory Days video? With the synth and big
drums in the background? It worked. But, of course, there is one
Springsteen and a decade worth of crappy music.

Slumdog Millionaire is a fairy tale as well. But it's what a fairy
tale would be if David Simon wrote one. It tells a story of Jamal, a
young man out of Mumbai's slums, sitting on the "hot seat" of the
Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" quiz show. Each
question that knows the answers to is, inexplicably, connected to a
part of his harrowing life. If this sounds bizarre to you, it is. Even
the cops in the movie think so and try to beat the truth out of the
boy. As he tells his story we see a vivid picture of three young lives
torn apart by the brutal poverty and violence of a Mumbai slum: Jamal,
his childhood sweetheart Latika and his tough older brother Salim.

The story has a heart of gold that it doesn't mind baring from time to
time, but it'll show you the process of molten metal going in the
chest as well. Like the best things to come out of Bollywood, it is
tough enough to have corny lines like, "I will wait at the V.T.
station every day until you come." It is also crisply edited,
beautifully shot and, unlike most Indian movies, it takes care of the
small things. In one scene Salim is shown picking up a used water
bottle from the trash, filling it with tap water and gluing the cap on
it so that he can re-sell it as mineral water. A lesser movie would
have shown him selling it but Boyle lets the viewer guess it.

The film has influences of some of the best crime movies made in
India. Danny Boyle cites Satya, Company, and Black Friday as his
influences. There is a scene very reminiscent of Satya where the two
brothers sit in a construction site and look at the slum below. Some
of the people responsible for these great movies even have a part in
this one. It also has the classic Hindi movie transition when a
character falls down in a dust cloud as a child and comes out the
cloud as a grownup. But on the other hand it has the technical
superiority of a Hollywood movie. The soundtrack, even though it's
very Indian, is more diverse and very modern.

Last night in the theater I could see the people around me having a
different reaction to the movie than I did. A gentleman sitting on the
same row as me had tears in his eyes when he stood up at the end of
the film. A tall guy in a Yankees hat, sitting in the front row,
cheered loudly every time something good happened for the young
protagonist. I didn't feel like having either of these reactions.
Neither did I find the movie as heart-wrenching as most of the critics
did. Maybe I have been desensitized by years of Bollywood films and
naked sentimentalism. Maybe the sound of the lead actor's British
accent coming out from beneath his put-on Indian accent was a buzzkill
for me.

But Danny Boyle, god bless him, has been successful in making a movie
about India that does not feel condescending. A story with India as a
character but without the funny accents, or westerners discovering
themselves, or any crap about "elders of the gentle race." It is
actually a film that an Indian can appreciate more than the average
western viewer: the subtitles don't let Anglophones in on the
cusswords.