A crowd-pleasing masterpiece?

Rating: Null/10 (25 December 2008)

The editing, digital cinematography, and Danny Boyle's direction (with co-director Loveleen Tandan) create a fascinating aesthetic which is perfect for the material. However, barely anyone (among the vast minority of people and critics who didn't care for this massively acclaimed film) is complaining about the film's technical virtues however, so how about all that contrived, sappy melodrama?
To my surprise, "Slumdog Millionaire" is very tasteful in almost every respect. The romance scenes are either beautifully understated (most of the scenes with them as children/young teenagers, and a couple after that) or fantasy melodrama like much of the stuff near the end of the film (although the actual final pre-credit shot itself is again, a tender and beautiful moment). I have no issues with the fantasy melodrama however, because most of the film is done in that tone. Even the very realistic and brutally true-to-life scenes involving the raids of Muslim sections of the slums by Hindus, and the luring of children to a life of begging on the streets (for gangsters and criminals) in exchange for accommodation and food are done in a manner that is both tastefully evocative of reality while fitting in tone with much of the rest of the film, which has a more hopeful tone. It sounds improbable, but that's what the screenwriter and director(s) achieve here. The film doesn't strive for 'gritty realism', but everything in the film (yes, everything) is perfectly evocative of reality. The trouble with 'gritty realism' is that it often is gritty and hopeless in a way life rarely is to most of us, and is actually laughable if done wrong. Jamal's flashbacks to the begging end in misery, but before that we get the happiness and relief of slum life that these children felt. The raid is unrelentingly horrifying, but it is a haunting memory rather than something the film dwells on without stopping. The film also gives us scenes of comedic escapism which are still within the realm of plausibility as well.
If you don't know the general plot by now, here it is: Jamal is a boy from the slums of Mumbai who has reached the final question on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" against all odds. The film, through a plot device I won't reveal even though it's only a mild spoiler, reveals the sources of Jamal's knowledge of the answers to each question (except for the ones he doesn't know and guesses at/uses the lifelines for) through flashbacks to him throughout his childhood and teenage years. Here enter the accusations of the film's supposedly 'hilarious', 'impossible', and 'dumb' contrivances. There's no way a chai wala knows the answers to those questions, and it's too convenient that he happens to have experienced something suitable for all those answers. I beg to differ. With a life like Jamal's (which is, believe it or not, being led right now by many children in India) I should hope that he gained at least that much knowledge. He didn't actually know the answers to every question, and on a game of both luck and knowledge it's entirely plausible to me that Jamal's game could actually happen. The only huge contrivance is the nature of the very last question and what happens when it's asked, but by then the movie had me in its grasp and the ploy worked. The fact that every member of the cast is absolutely excellent, including the child actors, doesn't hurt either.
It sounds odd, but "Slumdog Millionaire" seemed to me like it found a way to combine a realist look at India (and, according to the Indian person with whom I attended the film, it is absolutely spot-on in almost every regard, and certainly doesn't contradict anything I saw during my short visit to India) and a romantic melodrama. The end result, with the screenplay that combines the drama, comedy, and thriller genres to great effect, is both an aesthetic triumph, and unlikely as it sounds, a crowd-pleasing masterpiece. Also, the music is brilliant, both the original score by the legendary A.R. Rahman and the excellent choices made when it comes to the pop music included in the film (though that is to be expected from a Danny Boyle film). As for those moaning about the love story, perhaps you have not found that person yet, get back to me when you do.