Dec. 12th, 2008

randy_byers: (blue angel)
This is kind of a strange movie. It's the story of a lower-caste Indian boy -- the slumdog of the title -- who gets onto the Indian equivalent of the gameshow Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and goes on an incredible run. The bulk of the story is an exploration of his life and how he got to this point. What's odd is that while the surface story is frequently unpleasant and harsh -- with extreme poverty, torture, disfigurement, child abuse, implied rape, pogroms, and so on -- underneath this it's a lighter-than-air candy confection that seems almost without substance. I found it disorienting that way. There are echoes of Oliver Twist and The Three-Penny Opera, but I'm not sure they add up to anything. On a certain level it functions as a history of modern India as it drags itself out of the gutter of poverty and into an uncertain future of middle-class prosperity, but mostly this history only serves as a backdrop to a story of young love. Therefore, much as in Australia, the history is rendered something of a trivial backdrop. It doesn't help that the Girl who is the object of the Boy's affections is an almost total cipher.

That said, the story is very cleverly structured and engaging as a puzzle. The gameshow is used as a backbone on which to hang the boy's life and love story, with each question generating a long flashback. (As [livejournal.com profile] holyoutlaw remarked at the Deluxe afterwards, "What were they doing on the gameshow while the flashback was happening?") The location shooting in India is fascinating and beautiful -- and occasionally horrifying. There were sequences in the rural countryside -- tropical poverty and open air living -- that reminded me of Micronesia. The glimpses of today's India -- the boy is a chai wallah (chai delivery boy) in a call center -- and comments on caste and religious relations (the boy is Muslim too) are pointed and thought-provoking. The twists and turns of the story are well managed, and the Bollywood dance at the climax had me totally grinning and grooving in my seat. It sends you out of the theater comforted and relaxed after the ordeal, and I suppose there is a message there about overcoming extreme adversity and achieving your goals. It should be noted that despite all the abusive aspects of the story noted above, it is frequently very funny and sweet too.

One other thing has struck me in retrospect. Despite the fact that it's made and financed by Westerners (the director, Danny Boyle, is British, and 20th Century-Fox and Warner Bros both got their logos into the credits), there are no Westerners in the movie. All the characters and actors are Indian, as far as I could tell. No doubt that's part of the reason this is only playing in an art theater here in Seattle, despite the fact that it is a crowd-pleasing populist confection at heart. Wait, no, I take that back. There are several Western tourists portrayed in the movie, and all of them are portrayed is clueless chumps, taken to the cleaners by wily Indian street kids and only seen from their perspective. I'll give the film-makers props for that, although I'm curious what Indians think of this movie.

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