Do I dare dislike the Slumdog? Yes.

Rating: Null/10 (19 October 2011)

Let's get this straight. I am not here to write an article demeaning the credits of Indian film composer A.R.Rahman and artistic colleagues Resul Pookutty and Gulzar Sahab for winning so many Oscars; lyricist Gulzar being my favourite among them. I simply want to raise a few questions which came to mind during all the hype about much raved about movie Slumdog Millionaire.
The hype to me seems rooted in an age old colonial legacy returning, this time in the form of a film.
I am not seeking cheap publicity by just being different and running against the tide. And as for the matter of stirring up controversies, though that is a part of my job as a reporter in a democracy, I am ready to face the brickbats.
First of all let's get to the point of the identity of the movie. Slumdog is essentially being promoted as a victory for Indian cinema. Get your trousers unfolded folks...it is NOT Indian cinema. The film is a jointly-produced British-American film. Danny Boyle, the director of the movie, said in an interview on Oscar night, that while he is enjoying the the popularity in India, in reality, Slumdog is a completely British film, with all the basic crewmen, concept and funding being British.
Hell, right...but probably he also forgot another important thing...Dev Patel, the lead actor and hero of the movie, is a British-born Indian citizen of Britain and in all practical purposes cannot speak his mother tongue properly, let alone Hindi. Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, applauded the movie and its subsequent clean sweep at the prestigious red carpet awards, along with Kate Winslet winning the best actress, as a tremendous victory for the British film industry.
Wasn't it expected? Attempts on my part to say anything against Slumdog might be dubbed "unpatriotic". But frankly, I don't see any glory and patriotism in celebrating a film, the name of which itself seems derogatory to me and which is almost entirely crewed by foreigners. (No justification for Resul Pookutty for invoking the "my country, my civilisation" in his Oscar acceptance speech). Is it a poverty-porn movie? Well maybe not to that extent but, make no mistake, developing world poverty is definitely a sellable commodity on the trendy cultural Western scene.
Would the film have been equally popular had it been based on a white slum dweller of Europe or Australia, or a trailer park inhabitant of America? The answer is NO...hard but true. This is no rags to riches story folks, wake up...it only sold because it is based on the Mumbai slums of third world India, the ultimate subject to cash in on.
And now we come to the storyline, my favourite part to dissect. A lot of genuine good stories are ignored (comparison of Slumdog with the films Milk, Benjamin Button and The Reader is like comparing a James Hadley Chase book with one by Charles Dickens. To define it in cinematic terminology, Slumdog is an old fashioned, highly clichÃ©d, "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and boy gets girl back" story.
What is so great about it then? I am not sure. The acting is amateurish, Frieda Pinto the love interest in the movie is a diva, who acts as a femme fatale in real life too by dumping her long term boyfriend for glamour, post the Slumdog success (but then that is her personal life). Dev Patel is kiddish and Irfan Khan, the only good genuine actor of the lot, is wasted. And yeah, Anil Kapoor who starred in Slumdog, wouldn't have been given a chance had Danny Boyle been an Indian director.
I mean please, first Shilpa Shetty and now Anil Kapoor, don't we have any worthy and notable acting talents in India? To me the only stars in the film were the two little kids from Dharavi, who were probably seeing a movie camera for the first time and came through the experience better than the grown ups.
The recipe for success, of selling this kind of a fairy tale underdog story, is time tested. I give more credit to the film Elizabeth by Shekhar Kapoor which was shot in England, made its way to the Oscars and was censored in India, with no hype regarding that whatsoever. How ironic it is that similar films are made by Indian film makers, but don't get the needed success at the box office, yet an improbable far- fetched creation from a British brain is acclaimed and worshipped.