A celebration of life

Rating: 10/10 (23 November 2008)

Winner of the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival, Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan's radical Slumdog Millionaire is the feel-good story of an orphaned, street-wise young man trying to make it big on India's version of the TV show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" while hoping that the girl he has loved since childhood is watching. Based on the novel Q&A by Vikas Swarup and supported by the stunning cinematography of Anthony Dod Mantle and the music of A.R. Rahman, Slumdog reflects the chaos of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) India where it was filmed. Submerging the viewer in a cacophony of color and sound, the camera swoops and swirls in an often dizzying pace, taking us from the desolation of back alleys and garbage dumps to modern high rises and the fantastic beauty of the Taj Mahal.
Boyle uses nine different non-professional actors in three different time frames, each faithfully representing their character as they grow and develop. In the opening scene, the hero Jamal Malik, brilliantly performed by Dev Patel, is being questioned by Police Inspector (Irrfan Khan) who simply cannot understand how a "slumdog" like Jamal, without any education, can answer question after question on the game show without lying or cheating. In a city of 13 million people where the police know they can get away with almost anything, the methods of torture used to extract a confession are graphically displayed. With Jamal, however, they only succeed in uncovering the deeper truths of his character as the film flashes back to specific incidents in his life that reveal how his knowledge was gained by personal experience.
He knows, for example, that the star of the 1973 film Zanjeer was Amitabh Bachchan because he was his favorite actor as a little boy and was willing to cover himself with filth just to get his autograph. Built on memory, the film relives Jamal's life from the death of his mother to his entry into service to a cynical gangster who turns street children into blind beggars, reminding us of the millions of third-world children, not as lucky as Jamal, who fight against unending poverty each day. Jamal is fortunate to have allies, however: his brother Salim (Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail) and Latika (Rubina Ali), another orphan that Jamal becomes attached to form the "Three Musketeers", ready to do battle with the world.
Though circumstances lead the three into different areas when they become adults, Salim (Madhur Mittai) into the criminal underworld, Latika (Freida Pinto) to be "kept" by a rich man, and Jamal to become a "chai wallah", a server of tea to telemarketers, Jamal does not give up, knowing that his life is governed by destiny and ruled by love. Using their wits to survive, the funniest scene is when Jamal and Salim find themselves as tour guides at the Taj Mahal, inventing stories about the history of the building that are probably as true as the official versions in the brochures. The center of the film, however, revolves around Jamal's contesting for millions of rupees on the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", not necessarily to become rich but to woo Latika whom he knows is a fan of the show.
We root for Jamal try to win his jackpot and get his girl. While we are aware that the film is an unlikely fantasy, we also know that as barriers between individuals and nations break down and the world moves toward a greater sense of unity, the distinction between what is possible and what is not is less rigid. Slumdog Millionaire may or may not be the best film of the year, but with headlines telling us daily that the economy is sinking and that climate change threatens our very existence, a film that is a pure celebration of life is welcomed with a grateful heart.