Here we go... Western world catching up...
A.R. Rahman's Golden Globe for best original score is well-deserved indeed.
http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20090121/ARTICLES/901210312?Title=Movie_review___Slumdog__tells_simple_story_of_hope_with_mod_style
Movie review: 'Slumdog' tells simple story of hope with mod style
Simple story of hope is told with mod style in 'Slumdog'
By Ben Steelman
Staff Writer
Published: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 3:10 p.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 3:10 p.m.
Is "Slumdog Millionaire" the top movie of 2008? Well, you can debate its Golden
Globe for best picture, but it's certainly among the finest features of the
year.
On one hand, it's a gritty, unsentimental look at the modern India, a dizzying
combination of slums, call centers and its own version of Silicon Valley, where
rich and poor jostle each other, sometimes brutally. At the same time, it's a
sweet-tempered, boy-meets-girl romance in which miracles can happen,
occasionally at least, and the good guys can wind up on top.
Irish-British director Danny Boyle started his career dark and edgy with the
black comedies "Shallow Grave" (1995) and "Trainspotting" (1996), the latter
his quirkily cheery portrait of drug-zonked Scottish slackers. (Those two
pictures together launched the international career of Ewan McGregor.)
Boyle still has that dark streak; his top-grossing picture to date is probably
his zombies-attack yarn "28 Days Later" (2002). More recently, though, as in
his 2004 comedy "Millions", he's seemed willing to entertain his inner Capra.
These two sides of his personality come together most brilliantly in "Slumdog."
Boyle has detoured into the Third World before, most notably with "The Beach"
(2001), in which Leonardo DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton and a pack of other Western
hippies try to find Eden on an island off Thailand. (Like most Edens, of
course, it's just a temporary paradise.)
With "Slumdog," Boyle moves on to modern-day Mumbai (the city we used to call
Bombay), with a detour to Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal.
Based on the novel "Q & A" by Indian writer Vikas Swarup and adapted by
screenwriter Simon Beaufoy ("The Full Monty"), "Slumdog" begins, like many
Boyle movies, in the middle - right on the set of India's version of the game
show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"
Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a gofer who delivers tea to the employees in a Mumbai
phone center - where Hindustani workers pretend to be "Chad" and "Vicky" for
customers half a world away - is just one question away from the jackpot.
It's almost too good to be true. So, in an abrupt jump-cut, Jamal is dragged to
a local police station, where officers are giving him an Abu Ghraib-class
third-degree.
Not even college professors can make it past the first few answers, the
inspector says. How can a slumdog like Jamal wind up the champ - unless he's
cheating?
Tired, disaffected, Jamal proceeds to tell his story - how he and his older
brother Salim grew up in the Mumbai slums.
Jamal, it seems, was always the dreamer, chasing after the autographs of the
"Bollywood" action stars. Salim was the realist, the hustler, who stole Jamal's
precious mementoes and sold them off for a few rupees.
Raised Muslim, Jamal and Salim were left orphaned by the bitter riots that
occasionally break out when Hindu extremists attack Mumbai's Islamic
neighborhoods. (Opening just as Mumbai was struck by bloody terror attacks,
"Slumdog" gives a sad background to why that slaughter happened.)
The two boys wind up as street beggars under a bizarre Pied Piper who seems
part Fagin, part Michael Jackson. Escaping from that life, they wind up as
underground tour guides for American tourists seeking the "real" India.
Salim slips into the life of a gangster, working for a crime lord in their old
neighborhood. Jamal still carries a torch for Latika, the little girl he loved
as a child and still yearns to find again.
The story cuts back and forth between Jamal's childhood and the police station,
showing just how a street kid would learn who invented the revolver or whose
picture appears on the U.S. $100 bill.
It's a surprisingly old-fashioned story, but Boyle tells it briskly in mod
style, with music video-style camera angles and editing and a catchy
world-music soundtrack that ought to become a best seller. A.R. Rahman's Golden
Globe for best original score is well-deserved indeed.
The whole business ends up with a Bollywood-style musical number in a Mumbai
train station, which "Entertainment Weekly" found corny, but which seems to
work. Even the worst hell on Earth can be bearable, it seems, as long as one
can dream of something better - and try to make it real.
