Uncanny acumen

Rating: 10/10 (4 January 2009)

Danny Boyle world: a place that's achingly gorgeous, seriously tragic, terrifyingly dangerous, and that I love to visit but have nightmares about living in. While zombies on steroids are attacking people in a poeticly empty London, while astronauts hide from sun-deranged madman, and while kids are trying to do the right thing with money they've stumbled across, down in India an 18 year old kid destroys the caste system while only attempting to get the attention of someone he loves. Sure, Boyle has nothing like a View Askewniverse or anything like that, but all of his movies seem to exist in a space where characters' struggles for survival get second-place for their need to fit in, belong, and justify having hearts. His genre-jumping techniques belie an inimitable style that really makes everything he does worth watching.
Slumdog Millionaire is almost like to City of God what 28 Days Later... was to Dawn of the Dead--there are some major parallels both in story and structure, but Boyle's monster eventually takes sway over any comparisons and turns the movie into its own unique journey. Both Slumdog and City of God could have been really shot down critically due to seemingly excessive styles for such non-digital worlds they represent, except that they were so superbly done that you cannot help but fall in love with them. Boyle's acumen is such, though, that he's able to lead you through fear, longing, shock, and grief before taking you to probably the purest of happy endings deftly and articulately, whereas Moreille's City sometimes lost track of the emotional background while playing with its techniques.
Everything is in high form here. The script is amazing, creating believable characters and painful dialog while deftly juggling three different points in time until they all arrive in their poignant destination (from the most rote meaning of the word, sharing its roots with Destiny). The acting is superb and it's nearly impossible to see the actors through it, especially when three different kids play the same characters and it's hard not to believe that they weren't really the same person. Danny Boyle gets into Mumbai and other locations in India and shows it from many different perspectives that don't just show what he see's it's like, but represents the characters' vastly chaotic integration into a varied and uncertain world. He also picks out a superb soundtrack capable of both blowing out the speakers with awesomeness and also deftly increasing the drama in the scene--something he does often, but this time is even more worth mentioning because he mixes Indian rhythms with the well-known dramatic digital sounds of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire with an original score, and the mix is seamless.
However, technical specifics aside, quite frankly its nearly impossible not to like this movie. Jamal's romantic view of life mixed with already well-ingrained drama of the show, thematic plays with destiny and true-love, an alertness to the troubles of the world without the need to turn the movie into its own sentimental essay, all are powerful ingredients in this concoction. For all the intensely visual play with style and hand-held cameras, Boyle has remarkable reserve in alluding to the passions that drive him but making sure that the story drives the audience. It's actually really uncanny. One of the things that impressed me a lot about 28 Days Later... when I first saw it so many years ago is how even as a good horror movie it managed to both have the ability to make a point without slamming it into people's faces, and to coexist with the perception that there is more to the world than just what's happening to the characters. This approach comes out stronger than ever in Slumdog Millionaire, and as long as Boyle keeps up with it, I will continue to be an avid viewer of his works.
--PolarisDiB