Film: Slumdog Millionaire

[Jackal]

I must give this movie a chance. I have seen it all, but in half hour blocks here and there. Kind of takes from it to watch it that way.

 

[chopped_chimp]

Redleader....it's a movie not a documentary. Parts are based on fiction while other parts are real. That's the beauty of telling a story - you can tell it however you want to.

Once Were Warriors was a movie too. Yes there are parts of New Zealand that are similar but no one believes the whole country is full of wife beaters and rapists.

Gran Torino isn't a documentary on America either. It tells one story about racism but it isn't an encyclopedia to reference to.

 

[RedLeader]

Redleader....it's a movie not a documentary. Parts are based on fiction while other parts are real. That's the beauty of telling a story - you can tell it however you want to.

Once Were Warriors was a movie too. Yes there are parts of New Zealand that are similar but no one believes the whole country is full of wife beaters and rapists.

Gran Torino isn't a documentary on America either. It tells one story about racism but it isn't an encyclopedia to reference to.

Yes, but neither Gran Torino nor Once Were Warriors were nominated as best picture at the most prestegous awards show in the world. They were not movies designed to be viewed by as many people as possible. They were not written to include multiple ills about their respective cultures solely for exploitation. GT targeted racism and OWW included sexual/spousal abuse. They did this well within the confines of the movies' themes. SM does not really have a theme, other than to feel sorry for the little kid and hope he wins. You hope he wins more and more as you learn about his past being worse and worse. To do this, the director throws every possible ill reputation that India may have at the viewer. There's just way, way too much. And do you think the average soccer mom or dayjob dad is smart enough, or *not* ignorant enough to figure out what's going on behind the scenes? No, it's just going to make them think Well oh my goodness, our kids are not studying abroad in India!

Slumdog Millionare is a movie that purposefully falsifies and misrepresents many things about India's past and current. And it makes no attempt to educate the common viewer about what it is doing, what is fact, what is historical fiction, and what's just straight out of left-field. It's a director with an agenda. A movie for Westerners to feel good about themselves for appreciating something "multicultural," whereas it's really a movie made for profit and notoriety, that is really pissing the other culture rightfully off (seriously, don't believe me, then believe the world press). And it somehow pulled it all off.

 

[Max Power]

^ preach it!!!

I agree.

 

[TheDeceased]

SM does not really have a theme, other than to feel sorry for the little kid and hope he wins. You hope he wins more and more as you learn about his past being worse and worse. To do this, the director throws every possible ill reputation that India may have at the viewer. There's just way, way too much. And do you think the average soccer mom or dayjob dad is smart enough, or *not* ignorant enough to figure out what's going on behind the scenes? No, it's just going to make them think Well oh my goodness, our kids are not studying abroad in India!

Slumdog Millionare is a movie that purposefully falsifies and misrepresents many things about India's past and current. And it makes no attempt to educate the common viewer about what it is doing, what is fact, what is historical fiction, and what's just straight out of left-field. It's a director with an agenda. A movie for Westerners to feel good about themselves for appreciating something "multicultural," whereas it's really a movie made for profit and notoriety, that is really pissing the other culture rightfully off (seriously, don't believe me, then believe the world press). And it somehow pulled it all off.

Very well said.

 

[chopped_chimp]

I still think you're reading too much into it Redleader. It's simply your typical bollywood movie dressed up a bit for the western audience. I don't think it purposefully falsifies or misrepresents anything.

I've had a bit of a search for some Indian opinions and this was the first I found and an interesting one too...

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.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/39248

 

[chopped_chimp]

Another interesting review and subsequent follow ups at this site too. Some pro and some against it. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/movie-review-slumdog-millionaire/414049/

I can see why some people think it is a bit of a piss take on India but it's not like a lot of those things don't happen over there. Why not have a fairytale story that includes some reality? It's generally the bad things that happen that are harder to understand than things that are made up. Like wars on religion, child prostitution, identity theft, and poverty. These things have made Boyle's film interesting and at the same time have opened many peoples eyes to things they normally don't want to consider.

So many people take the "if I don't know about it then it's not happening stance". This movie has shoved many things we try not to think about right in our faces. That can only be a good thing.

I also agree that Indians might feel embarrased about this movie. The truth hurts sometimes. However I still don't think the aim of the movie was to villify India. I think it was to use artistic licence and tell a Bollywood type story but set in a Trainspotting environment.

 

[Feels]

didn't like it. cheesy, predictable, utterly boring stuff... just don't get any enjoyment out of these kind of rags-to-riches movies, and it's filmed more or less like an extended music video, very unattractive imo.

 

[The Liberal Media]

Best picture.

Justice was served.

 

[TheDeceased]

I think it was the worst result since Titanic in 1998, personally. But then again there wasn't a lot of competition this year. I didn't really like anything that was nominated (that I've seen).

 

[RedLeader]

I think it was the worst result since Titanic in 1998, personally. But then again there wasn't a lot of competition this year. I didn't really like anything that was nominated (that I've seen).

Crash was worse than Titanic*. The Director overdramatized and falsely presented black/white racism in America in attempts to draw out more of an emotional response out of movie-goers (typically best-picture type awards go to movies that make people experience the widest-range of emotions in 2 hours). If you want to see a movie that better portrays it, go see that recent one with Samuel L. Jackson as the antagonist. Why was that better? Because it focused on one particular type of racism - that of a mixed couple moving to a black neighborhood. The issue to undertook fit perfectly within the confines of the movie's theme. Crash threw racism in every possible form, at an extreme-circumstance level, at the audiance. And because people cried and called their friends of different races afterward, it become something of a cultural "feel good" pattern. Much of the criticisms of Crash could be generalised and applied to SM.


*I mean the one that won best picture. The 1996 Canadian flick with the same name is a gem of a film.

It's simply your typical bollywood movie dressed up a bit for the western audience. I don't think it purposefully falsifies or misrepresents anything.

The average Westerner who sees this movie knows little more about Bollywood movies other than they come out of India and are occasionally funny to watch late-at-night when high/drunk. They don't know the fine-details and accepted standards about Bollywood movies being fairy-tales, or what within Indian culture and history it is acceptable or offensive for a BW movie to twist up. Again, to Indians and serious Bollywood fans, this is understood; most could write a wikipedia article about it. But again, the average American does not know this, and many will simply take it at face-value. And because the movie does nothing to educate the marginal viewer about Bollywood cinema as an artform, it misleads them.

I can see why some people think it is a bit of a piss take on India but it's not like a lot of those things don't happen over there. Why not have a fairytale story that includes some reality? It's generally the bad things that happen that are harder to understand than things that are made up. Like wars on religion, child prostitution, identity theft, and poverty. These things have made Boyle's film interesting and at the same time have opened many peoples eyes to things they normally don't want to consider.

Again, when people go see this movie, they consciously take out of it the romantic storyline, and subconsciously filter all of the ill-represents of India away. CC, you may be smart enough to see the movie at a deeper level, and understand what it is that I am getting at. I am not necessarily criticising how someone such as yourself will interact with it. I'm talking, again, about the average viewer.

So many people take the "if I don't know about it then it's not happening stance". This movie has shoved many things we try not to think about right in our faces. That can only be a good thing.

Yes, but again in a very explotative way. I feel like if I elaborate more here, I will just be rewriting stuff.

As for the review, I'm not saying that every Indian will hate it. But basically anything can be found on the Internet, and with this movie being so popular, I'm sure there will exist positive Indian reviews in the thousands.

 

[TheDeceased]

Crash was worse than Titanic

What I meant was that Titanic won 11 Academy Awards and Slumdog Millionaire won 8... when really neither of them deserved such recognition, but I see what you mean about Crash though.

 

[L2R]

i agree that titanic, crash and slumdog all do not deserved best picture.

but i like slumdog far more than those other two.


btw: since when was the oscars primarily about movies?

 

[chopped_chimp]

Again, when people go see this movie, they consciously take out of it the romantic storyline, and subconsciously filter all of the ill-represents of India away.

I'll readily admit that when I first saw the movie this is basically how I thought too. It has been interesting to look a bit deeper into it though.

You seem to have a good knowledge and understanding on film making.

 

[TheDeceased]

btw: since when was the oscars primarily about movies?

Just because it's corrupt and commercial doesn't mean it has to be a travesty.

 

[expothead]

entertaining, but the end seemed a little forced...

 

[TheSpade]

When is everyone going to forget all about this boring, obvious and not very exciting film.

Can't understand why so many folk are going crazy over an average film, nor why it's winning so many awards.

 

[alasdairm]

Can't understand...

you said it

also, it's easy to say a movie is 'predictable' or 'obvious' after seeing it

alasdair

 

[TheDeceased]

it's easy to say a movie is 'predictable' or 'obvious' after seeing it

Yes it's better to say a movie is 'predictable' before seeing it!

 

[TheSpade]

What a silly statement alasdairm!

The film couldn't be any more obvious and predictable just like the Oscars!