One question away from winning 20 million rupees on India’s version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) is detained, interrogated and tortured by police on suspicion of having cheated in the game show. Instead of confessing, however, Jamal recounts the various experiences which, over the course of his life, supplied him with the answers.
After his mother was killed in Hindu-Muslim riots in the slums of Mumbai, Jamal grew up under the protection of
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Slumdog Millionaire |
his brother, Salim (Madhur Mittal). Under the malevolent ‘care’ of a gangster named Maman (Ankur Vikal), who recruited street children to beg for him, he met the orphan Latika (Freida Pinto) and fell immediately in love.
But brotherly discord saw Salim claim Latika for himself and subsequently lose touch with Jamal. Years later, working as a chaiwalla, or tea server, at a call centre, Jamal devises a scheme to appear on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in order to reconnect with his brother and his long-lost love.
Over and over, at every stage of his life, Jamal is shown running: from police, from crooks, from captors, from his brother. And his appearance on Millionaire is merely a continuation of this conceit, a last, climactic attempt to escape from the life of a chaiwalla and from the claustrophobic confines of anonymous, impoverished mediocrity.
At its best, Slumdog Millionaire is a story about love, sibling rivalry, fraternal insensitivity, and destiny, told with a semblance of the settings and sensibilities which made Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance one of the most riveting, heart-wrenching reads of the last two decades; but its present-tense Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? wrapping paper reduces it to a predictable and outrageous soap opera.
It is a nod to the Bollywood style, perhaps, which relies on a mythic sense of predestination rather than our accustomed Hollywood suspense – and wherein a happy ending is even more assured than in the western tradition; alternatively, one could chalk it up to laziness on the part of the screenwriters, for as much as there is an enthralling story here, it’s far too gussied up to touch the social or emotional nerves it might have in its raw form. (The film is based on Vikas Swarup’s novel, Q and A, but the weakness of the gameshow/flashback structure is such that the filmmakers would have been farther ahead to jettison that plot-line completely and tell “Slumdog” as a coming of age story without the “Millionaire” et al.)
Danny Boyle’s direction is assured, although his award-winning Indian co-director Loveleen Tandan surely shares most of the credit. The cinematography is beautiful, and will certainly give Benjamin Button a run for its money come Oscar night. But the biggest, most pleasant surprise is a cast of mostly new, mostly marvellous child and youth actors, who render with vivid sincerity scenes from Jamal’s childhood, beginning with his preposterous acquisition of an autograph from revered Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan (who has attacked the film for its portrayal of India).
The setting, too, is breathtaking, alternately in its resplendence (the Taj Mahal) and in its squalor (the titular slums of Jamal’s childhood). Moreover, it is a refreshing change from the American small-town or ghetto story it could have been; for this self-same reason, that it could have been another all-American feel-good story, charges of “tourism porn” and exploitation are generally fatuous.
Given the all-around cinematic pedigree on display, Slumdog’s occasional lapses into absurdity are relatively easy to forgive; however, they are impossible to overlook. Ultimately, the narrative cements itself in just the sort of mediocrity its protagonist is trying to escape – too strained and improbable to be taken at face value, but not sufficiently lofty or poetic to achieve the operatic status it aspires to – but for every aspect of the film aside from its storytelling, Slumdog Millionaire is more than up to snuff.