A celluloid love letter to Bombay...

Rating: 8/10 (6 January 2009)

Two years ago, I bought Vikas Swarup's innocuously named novel "Q&A", but must confess I have not yet made the time to read it. This novel forms the basis for "Slumdog Millionaire", a title that is oxymoronic but more apt for the audacious story of Jamal and Latika. Few would be able to resist the disarmingly honest, gritty, but ultimately uplifting and optimistic tale. It is certainly on my personal list of the best films of 2008. The release, in early December, of this cinematic love letter to Bombay/Mumbai could not have been better timed, as it arrived when we needed it most, right on the heels of the 170 horrific murders that took place there on 11/26/08. The film celebrates the resourcefulness and resilience of Bombayites and the live-and-let-live ethos of the city (which survives despite the sporadic outbreaks of sectarian violence and communal riots always instigated by unsavory politicians and sleazy "holy" men). Indeed, Bombayites are so consumed with the business of survival, that there is no time to waste dwelling on banal differences of caste and creed.
"Slumdog Millionaire" opens with Jamal (the titular slum dog) as the unlikeliest contestant on the Indian version of the TV quiz show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?". Equally incredibly, he is just one answer away from the contest's top prize of 20 million rupees. To ensure that Jamal is not a wily cheat, or perhaps to prove him one, the cops are called in and they attempt to beat a confession out of him. What ensues, however, is a series of flashbacks about three interlinked lives, stranger than any fiction, which settles without doubt how the unlettered Jamal could know the correct responses to questions designed to flummox university graduates.
While I am a complete cynic in real life, I fell hook, line, and sinker for the film's central romance between the Muslim protagonist Jamal and his exquisite Hindu ladylove Latika. The tribulations of the underdog are a staple of movie plot lines, but this particular story is so much more poignant because it is set in Bombay/Mumbai. We root for Jamal to succeed on all fronts because we're privy to his extraordinary life story.
Director Danny Boyle has a playful spirit that was most apparent in his film "A Life Less Ordinary". It was about a bungled kidnapping, but his leads took time out to break into song and elaborately choreographed dance routines. Now in "Slumdog Millionaire", he gets to indulge this appetite for fun, because his characters though poor, orphaned, and abandoned, are still children, and they unfailingly spot the opportunities for joy and mischief in their bleak lives. There is a wonderful touch of magical realism, where the two rascals Jamal and Salim are mesmerized by an opera performed at night in the environs of the Taj Mahal. But even as they marvel, they remain busy with the job at hand: pilfering the purses of the enraptured oblivious audience.
The soul-destroying poverty found in the big city, sinister predators, rapacious goons, underage whores, orphans maimed to better their earnings as beggars, the gleeful scams of street urchins, and get-rich-quick schemes that invariably turn criminal are all depicted without sugar coating, and so might make unpalatable viewing for some. For those who can stomach reality, the payoff is magnificent, for although this is a work of fiction, it closely mirrors the lives of millions. In the human spirit, as embodied by Jamal and Latika, we see that even the most dire, dehumanizing circumstances do not succeed in stamping out decency, loyalty, kindness, and love, and this is what the film celebrates.
I'd like to point out that while director Danny Boyle is reaping kudos for his amazing film in the West, the contribution of Boyle's co-director Loveleen Tandan remains unacknowledged. I am certain that Boyle's enormous success in capturing the Dickensian essence and authenticity of Bombay, the nuances of its bracingly blunt vernacular, and the spot-on casting, especially of the child actors, is largely due to Ms. Tandan's efforts. She is listed in the film's credits as co-director, dialogue writer/translator, and casting director-India: proof of her huge portfolio of responsibilities on the film, but not a single critic has mentioned her. Anthony Dod Mantle's spectacular cinematography is another reason not to miss this film: his camera leaps and vaults with the exactly the same euphoria and joie-de-vivre of its child actors,and its restless eye never stops as it sweeps over a city constantly in motion. I am told that he used Canon EO5 still cameras to film in normally crowded locations so as to capture as natural a mood as possible. This works brilliantly in the scenes at the Taj Mahal, and at venues that would otherwise not be filmable.