Slumdog atheist

Rating: 9/10 (16 December 2008)

Jamal saw her first. Latika just showed up one day near the familial home like a hungry cat, a very wet cat. As the hard rain poured down on her, the young boy, grieving along with his older brother Salim over their dead mother, had the presence of mind to invite the drenched girl inside his house, and heart. As adults, Salim became a Muslim, but not Jamal, not after seeing his mother cut down by a mob of Muslim-hating Hindis. If Jamal became a Muslim, the Islamic faith would only stand in his way. Praise Latika, not Allah. To a self-righteous man, Latika is damaged goods. Sold into prostitution, the girl's formative years were spent in the company of men; she even slept with Salim. From Jamal's point of view, Latika is neither pure nor impure; no label of virgin nor whore to define her in patriarchal terms; no stigma. Since Jamal is godless, the harsh Islamic laws which subjugate women goes unacknowledged by the young man. To his religious older brother, her womanhood is spoiled; that's why Salim has no reservations about sleeping with Latika after they save her from prostitution; that's why he throws her back into sex slavery once he spends himself.
Jamal loses her. He also severs the family line, and loses him.
Jamal hatches a plan to get Latika's attention by appearing on "Who Wants to be a Milionaire?" The popular game show plays in the background during Jamal's reunion with Latika, who lives with a crime boss, Salim's employer. This mercenary finds cricket more interesting than the woman. Structured through a series of flashbacks, "Slumdog Millionaire" shows how Jamal acquires the basis for answering the host's questions, all of which are things that he knows. In one such sequence, the contestant remembers seeing the man who's the career leader in goals on Salim's employer's television screen. The correct answer is good for one million rupees. "Slumdog Millionaire" recalls an episode of the defunct NBC sitcom "Cheers", where Cliff Clavin, the erudite know-it-all mailman, makes an appearance on "Jeopardy" and has the good fortune of encountering categories that play into his wheelhouse("Civil Servants", "Stamps Around the World", "Celibacy"). Since the questions being read by the show's host drives the narrative, some may argue that "Slumdog Millionaire" it much too paradigmatic for its own good: each Q & A composite just happens to push the story forward in linear fashion. While the story itself is formulaic, what we see while the story unravels; a privileged peek into the hard-luck lives of Mumbai Indians, more than offsets the inorganic plotting.
To answer the final question, Jamal uses his lifeline. No other person for an Indian man is more important than his own brother. But that lifeline was cut long ago when Salim had sex with the fair figure of his idealized love. Instead, Latika becomes Salim's surrogate, which makes "Slumdog Millionaire" recognizable to a western audience, because in Islamic culture, men do not lean on women for support. On the matter of the question about the all-time scoring leader in cricket, the host tries to give Jamal the wrong answer, which cements our topsy-turvy feelings of defamiliarization we get from seeing an American institution being transferred to a foreign culture that his differing social norms. The host's attempt to railroad Jamal is a far cry from Robert Redford "Quiz Show", in which the producers of the game show "21" supplies Charles Van Doren(Ralph Fiennes) with the right answers.
No god can tear this love apart. No god can debase Latika in Jamal's eyes. Love and money, not love of money, or a god, is what's important to these fated lovers when their lips, at long last, press together, outside the jurisdiction of the warring religions. "Slumdog Millionaire" quietly preaches secularism in a country where religion weighs heavily on its people.