Bollywood Trumps Hollywood?

Rating: 10/10 (3 January 2009)

I'm going to try and do this film justice by reviewing it with as keen an eye as I can muster, but I fear I'll still fall far short of the mark ...so here goes...
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is the best movie of the year for a couple of reasons. The first is that it is both compartmentalized and global at the same time. It harkened me back to my love of another favorite film of mine, THE USUAL SUSPECTS, in which a man sits in a police station and tells his story in flashback. But any similarities between these two ends with the police station and their equally excellent scripts (sidenote: The Usual Suspect remains my top favorite film script of all time but this one's pulling up close).
Slumdog takes place at a police station as young man named Jamal (Dev Patel) goes through a tortuous interrogation at the hands of India's police force. Having recently been on India's version of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire"  and answered all of the questions correctly so far  he was whisked off to the local constables office on the possibility of having cheated. The show has had lawyers, doctors, physicists, and many other well-educated people on the show who didn't get as far as Jamal, so how did he  a chai tea delivery boy  get so far (only one more question remains and he'll have his million)? The story is complex, funny, grotesque, horrible and loving, all within the same breath. Each answer comes not from Jamal's limited education, but from his time on India's hard-bitten streets where he grew up an orphan along with his brother, Salim (Madhur Mittal). Having watched their mother murdered during a religious uprising against Muslims, Jamal and Salim had to make their way in the world on their own, their paths separating wildly and then re-merging, often years later. But during their younger days as little kids, they encountered a pretty young orphan girl named Latika (the amazingly beautiful Freida Pinto), whom Jamal finds an instant fascination with. And it is his fascination and love for her that will drive him for the rest of his young life ...which include his chances on the millionaire show. Separated time and again (including thanks to the departure from his brother as he falls in with some very bad gangsters), Jamal never gives up his quest to be with her, even when it seems impossible.
It is Jamal's remembrances of his street life that are the hardest to watch, making for some gritty scenes (and some funny ones, including a scene where Jamal must jump down a latrine hole in order to escape and get a much-wanted autograph from a local movie star). Forced child labor is nothing new in India's slums, and it is brought into nauseating focus as we watch kids beaten, deformed ("Blind singers earn twice as much") and sent onto the streets to beg for money ...all at the hands of adults wanting to take advantage no matter the cost.
The stories back and forth nature (like the aforementioned The Usual Suspects) was a great way to show Jamal's life in a bubble. The audience really, really, really cared for him and wanted to see him win (the show I went to had audience members applauding  loudly  when the film ended), showing how well the script was put together and how well acted the film was by these relative unknowns (the only actor I was familiar with was Irrfan Khan who was in another favorite Bollywood film of mine entitled THE NAMESAKE ...note: see that movie, too!) Hollywood should take note of this film, and apparently has as the Golden Globes have come out with their nominations (2008) and listed it among four categories (Best Director, Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Original Score, and Best Screenplay).
One final note: This film is truly an independent, tolling in at $15 million for production costs. I've seen much, much lesser films (in terms of quality) that had a budget ten times that. But one can't forget that filming in India is much cheaper than here in the States. Still, Hollywood, take notice! This is what great cinema is all about.
Oscars! Here comes Bollywood!