Both heartbreaking and uplifting!

Rating: 10/10 (13 December 2008)

This film encapsulates the predominant feeling and impression I have had about India ever since I travelled through it  that it is the people's thirst for life despite incredible adversity that so endears me about the country. There are scenes in this film that are absolutely devastating and others that will make your heart soar, often at the same time! Particularly the scenes involving the protagonists as children - one scene in particular will haunt me forever and gave me a devastating new insight into the world of child beggars. Be warned, you are going to cry in this film. I did. The film follows the story of Jamal and his brother Salim, reflected through the Hindi version of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'(!), the major quiz show that Jamal manages to appear and become a national hero on. As the show's host cannot understand how a 'slumdog' like Jamal can have the answer to all the questions, he is brutally interrogated by a couple of security officers as to HOW he knows the answers. It is through Jamal's life experiences that he knows the answers, and we uncover it in the film through flashbacks. It is a life that involves abject poverty, religious violence, crime, love and many other 'life' experiences that we witness through Jamal and his brother Salim's life; and also through the relationship with his lifelong love, Latika. The performances all round are excellent, the cinematography mesmerising, and the script both absurdly hilarious and heartbreakingly real. How the two brothers manage to survive is extraordinary, much like the film itself. This film has already won a slew of Audience and Critics awards and has recently been nominated for Best Picture and Best Director at the Golden Globes. It deserves every one of them.