First seen at AFI Fest 2008:
On its face, Slumdog Millionaire,
this year’s little-movie-that-could and current Best Picture
frontrunner, could be mistaken for a hollow piece of filmmaking.
While no prominent critic has suggested this, it’s important to
realize that the movie is essentially made up of imagery-dense,
music-video-esque sequences; old-fashioned Dickensian themes;
and simple flashback storytelling. Juxtaposed with how complex
the film actually comes across, this fact stands as an
awe-inducing testament to just what a massive accomplishment
Slumdog Millionaire is.
In the first
scenes, we meet teenage Jamal (Dev Patel*) as he is tortured by
Indian police. Jamal has just triumphed in a winning-streak on
his country’s version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”,
performing so strongly for an uneducated once-slum-orphan that
the show’s producers and the cops think he cheated. He has done
no such thing however and, as an onscreen set of
“Millionaire”-style multiple-choice answers to the film’s
narrative suggest in its opening, Jamal’s performance may be an
object of fate. As the police play back a tape of the show and
interrogate Jamal, the viewer witnesses how jamal learned each
answer in his life’s journey from the poorest neighborhood in
Mumbai to the set of a popular television show. Jamal’s mother’s
(Sanchita Couhdary) death at the hands of Hindu extremism, his
brother’s transformation (Madhur Mittal*) from nurturer to thug
following a brutal kidnapping, and his own enduring love for
childhood-crush Latika (Freida Pinto*) are all intertwined in an
emotionally-stirring narrative that illustrates the recent
history of a headline-making country in evocative and
unflinching detail. And the movie does it all within the
aforementioned simple structure.
While I
normally reject auteur theory because film is the
ultimate collaborative medium, it would be hard to deny that
director Danny Boyle, always the engineer of cinema, is
responsible for the bulk of Slumdog Millionaire’s
success. He is the hands-on anchor of every vital element of the
film, from the poignant performances of his cast of mostly
non-actors to the unbelievable camerawork done on three
cutting-edge units by DP Anthony Dod Mantle to editor Chris
Dickens’ adrenaline-pumping knack for pacing. Boyle is the
reason why the film is so brilliantly innovative, making its
straightforward structure thoughtful and welcome rather than
conventional and shrug-inducing.
Reading over
the last three paragraphs, I realize I’m skirting around the
true brilliance of the film, which is not exactly technical
despite its competence in all areas artistic. Rather, Slumdog
Millionaire’s genius rests in the way moves, how it allows
the viewer to experience the essence of India within the
parameters of a moving story and technical flourishes I’ve
too-coldly discussed. It’s hard to really describe just what a
wonder the picture is in the moment: like when M.I.A.’s “Paper
Planes” unexpectedly comes on at full-blast in a jaw-dropping
train-ride-sequence, or when the Taj Mahal is intimately
photographed in verite documentary style, or when Latika’s face
is shown as an eight-frame-per-second motif to illustrate it as
a figment of Jamal’s hopeful mind. When these passages infuse to
show the hope and suffering of a nation through the universal
lens of traditional underdog-based popular-entertainment—you
tell me whether said entertainment is the show in the movie, the
movie itself, or both—Slumdog Millionaire becomes
magical. It’s an experience that holds the essence of realism
and transcends reality in the process.
Oh, and did I
mention there’s an end-credit dance sequence that far surpasses
those of the bombastic Bollywood hits that inspired it in terms
of energy, choreography, and pure fun? Chalk that onto the list
of traits to gush about in what is one of the best films of the
year.
*I have
credited the oldest actor for each character. They are portrayed
by 2-3 different actors for different ages.
-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews
Review Published on: 12.5.2008
Screened on: 11.7.2008 at the
ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood, CA and 11.24.2008 at Laemmle's
Playhouse in Pasadena, CA.