Slumdog Millionaire
15, Nationwide
From the wonderful things I’d already heard about Danny Boyle’s latest film Slumdog Millionaire I was fully poised to fall madly in love with it, and perhaps even run off with it although I would not have its babies — I’m through with having babies; I had one once, a boy, and 16 years later I still can’t shrug him off — but it never really came to that. It’s probably all my fault, as these things so often are, but I could not love Slumdog. I liked it as a friend but the chemistry just wasn’t there. I don’t know what it was. I’ll try to work it out as I go along and maybe I’ll get there and maybe I won’t. Heck, I’ve been off for Christmas; I’m just easing myself back here.
Based on Vikas Swarup’s novel Q&A and adapted by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty, Starter for Ten) it’s set in Mumbai and is the story of Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a scarcely educated chai wallah (tea boy) from the slums who is one answer away from winning the top prize of 20 million rupees on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?, the TV quiz show that is now playing in every country in the world and is probably playing in your pantry at this very moment. (Don’t believe me? Go check. Don’t have a pantry? Then go check the gun room. Don’t have a gun room? Check the stables. Don’t have stables? Seriously? Are you sure The Spectator is the magazine for you?)
Now, the dazzlingly insincere quiz show host (played wondrously by Anil Kapoor, quite my favourite person in the whole film) suspects Jamal of cheating, as do the police, who bring him in for a little light torturing — a bit of electrocution, nothing more — and interrogation. How could an uneducated, 18-year-old slumdog — marvellous word, that — have known the correct answers so far? To prove his innocence, Jamal goes though every quiz question, explaining how he knew the answer and how it relates to his life. Thus the film is set for a series of flashbacks: how, as a young boy, he saw his mother being killed in a religious uprising; how he and brother, Salim, were left to live by their wits; how they befriended a fellow orphan, a girl, Latika. The coincidences pile up like nobody’s business, but that’s OK. Boyle’s storytelling is so wildly energetic, so poundingly fast, so boldly coloured and so vivid — at times, you can almost smell the stink of the rubbish tip the three kids are picking over — it just doesn’t matter. But?
Well, it’s the film’s ultimate trajectory, which is not just obvious from the word go — within ten minutes you know how this film is going to pan out — but is also just so treacly. It concerns Jamal’s love for Latika, whom he keeps finding then losing, finding then losing, finding and then losing again, the silly boy. The film increasingly focuses on this romance, even though it’s not at all interesting, just as Jamal and Latika aren’t that interesting. He is virtuous to the point of dreariness while Latika is simply a Bollywood beauty via Bollywood banal. Perhaps Boyle is celebrating Bollywood here, or even satirising it (it’s hard to know), but it sure is dull.
I don’t know why, but I just thought the film would have more to say about other things; would have something to say about poverty, squalor and social injustice in modern-day, call-centre India, or something to say about the TV generation who think that if they lounge around long enough fame and fortune will land in their laps, even though it won’t. Indeed, as I have often said to the 16-year-old whom I’ve yet to shrug off, ‘Tell me, who is the one doing all the work around here? Is it:
A. Me
B. Me
C. Me
D. Me.’
After phoning a friend, any friend, but never until after noon, he will usually come up with the correct answer: it is ‘Me’. Maybe he’s not as dumb as I thought.
Listen, Slumdog is a good film and an appealing film with some lovely performances but it’s not a great film: it’s too sentimental and predictable for that. In fact, it embraced everything I hoped it would avoid while avoiding all I hoped it would embrace, which may be why I couldn’t passionately love it. Still, onwards and upwards although not just at this minute. I’m still easing myself back here. q
Comments