The future is coming

Rating: 10/10 (25 January 2009)

America, I mean the United States of America are changing sides, from Hollywood to Bollywood. They have to answer that unfair competition from the deprived Indians and go directly on their turf, since we can't really speak of a lawn, and bring the biblical truth to those pagans. That's what I found most fascinating at first: the image of the USA seen through the filter of Mumbai. First, make some simple questions fuzzy and difficult to capture. Moslems and Hindus are sure there but we don't know who is who. They speak the same language. No more difference really between Urdu and Hindi. Only the names of the main characters sound Moslem, that's all and the anti-Moslem pogrom or riot is just an unclear detail, especially since the dregs of this society are them, the Moslems. First serious blurred issue. The second is of course the problem of the Untouchables, the Dalits. They cannot be Moslems since they are a Hindu caste. And sure enough our characters who are living in the "slums" or shantytown, on the pile of garbage, are not Hindus, hence are not Untouchables. Then we are surprised because taking care of toilets is one of the tasks of these untouchables, or doing the washing for the fortunate who can afford that kind of service. So where are they? Invisible of course, but not in a city like Mumbai where there must be several millions of them. The episode of the little kid jumping into the toilet hole is just unthinkable for a Moslem child. If we go on with that fuzziness, we find out that the orphanage must be on the side of evil, since exploiting the Moslem orphans, hence Hindu. And the gangster who recuperates one of the boys when they are running away from the orphanage people after saving the girl and killing the main organizer of that begging and whoring ring, since he defines himself as the friend of the enemy of his enemies, must be Moslem. All that is unclear and that is done on purpose and it keeps some ambiguity about the Moslems in India without giving the slightest real knowledge about the real situation in India. But then of course we can speak of India itself and of its emergence from the mud-pit of the world. The picture that is given there is this time a reflection of and on what the West was fifty years ago, and some will say still are. Anything is good for these super poor people to do something to improve their lot, essentially by using any kind of opportunity that comes along that is half honest and half dishonest, like borrowing something that has been left somewhere like shoes at the entrance of a temple, but with the firm intention of not bringing them back and of making them circulate further for a little profit. This great poverty is not at all nurturing resignation but all the opposite, determination and the will to gamble everything to get up at least one step if not two. The film is entirely centered on a TV game, Questions and Answers that can lead the winner to 20 million Rupees. A game of punctual knowledge for a lot of money and nothing else. And yet out of that game popular fame is produced, the conviction that you can never keep people down longer than they will decide, that the survival instinct is nothing because it leads to killing, but the instinct to improve one's lot is a lot more stronger because it is supposed to lead to improving your lot in society itself. Then the story is of course a comedy because of the love affair that is intertwined and entangled in that story and the rewriting of Stephen King's "Running Man" (with Schwarzenegger) has become pleasant and even funny and not the gruesome drama of the model. The final scene is a typical Bollywood scene with hundreds of actors and actresses dancing in Mumbai's Victoria Station and it is some kind of cherry to top off the ice cream. This film will entertain you deeply if you try to use your brain to see the social discourse that is hiding behind the flashy and colorful surface.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines