Emotional Connectivity Blends with Visual Panache in Boyle's Hindi Fanciful Tale of Destiny

Rating: 9/10 (4 January 2009)

It's difficult to categorize a film that takes as many precariously driven dramatic turns as this 2008 picture directed by the versatile Danny Boyle. So why even bother since he manages to navigate fluidly between the feel-bad and feel-good extremes of Simon Beaufoy's ("Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day") emotionally dense script with aplomb? The apt title refers to someone who grew up in the slums of Mumbai, and in this case, is on the verge of becoming very wealthy due to a serendipitous situation that leads him to be a finalist on the Hindi version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" On the surface, the premise sounds rather silly, but the familiar game show, already a trivia footnote in this country, provides the catalyst for the vividly rendered events that unfold for one particular boy named Jamal Malik, a coffee carrier at a local telemarketing company. Contrivances aside, it is his life experiences that feed him the answers to the increasingly difficult questions, but the producers suspect a scam at work and have the police torture him in order to confess. What really emerges is Malik's undying devotion to his one true love, Latika, from whom he has long been estranged due to the desperate circumstances in her life.
The movie's childhood flashbacks have a Dickensian quality set against a cultural tableau unfamiliar to most of us. They focus on young Jamal and his older brother Salim, who are soon orphaned after their mother is killed for being a Muslim. They are joined by another abandoned orphan Latika, and together they dub themselves the Three Musketeers. They eventually find themselves indentured under the servitude of the deceptively kind Maman, who goes to extremes in keeping the children as street beggars. The brothers escape and eventually figure out how to scam tourists at the Taj Mahal, while Latika suffers the consequences of being left with Maman. The rest of the plot shows how the brothers diverge in values and how Latika becomes an unwilling mistress for a rival gang leader. Amazingly, Beaufoy's screenplay juxtaposes these spiraling events with the multiple-choice questions posed by Prem, the jocular "Millionaire" host, a popular figure who reveals his own sleazy underside in short order. There is such a swirl of activity with every episode in the film that there is little time to question the plausibility of the many plot turns because the resulting implausibility is what makes the movie so arresting.
Boyle gives co-directing credit to Loveleen Tandan, previously a casting director specializing in India-themed films like Mira Nair's "Monsoon Wedding" and "Vanity Fair", and it's obvious that the combination of their talents gives us a greater intimacy into India than one would expect from Boyle by himself. Other than his charming fable, "Millions", there is little indication in Boyle's resume (the sci-fi shocker "Sunshine", the post-apocalyptic thriller "28 Days Later", the drug-infested "Trainspotting") that he would have been capable of telling such a fanciful tale so convincingly. At the same time, the visual flourishes (thanks primarily to the stunning cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantel) and fast-cut editing reflect his familiar touches. The no-frills performances befit the story with Dev Patel bringing emotional focus to the grown Jamal and Frieda Pinto appropriately fetching as the grown Latika. Smaller roles are filled with a few more familiar faces with Indian movie icon Anil Koopar playing Prem and character actor Irrfan Khan (the father in "The Namesake") as the determined police inspector. There are times when the film feels overly manipulative, but the buoyant spirit keeps thing afloat just when you feel you've been left on sensory overload.