The Reel Critic

Author: Josh Wessler

MOVIE: Slumdog Millionaire
DIRECTOR: Danny Boyle
STARRING: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto and Madur Mittal

"Slumdog Millionaire" is a tricky movie to talk about. It has attracted global controversy regarding its child actors, it depicts graphic and upsetting material and it seems anathema to the aesthetic preferences of the major award ceremonies. Nonetheless, its widespread success at awards ceremonies, capped by its triumph last Sunday, indicates the extent to which it resonates with audiences. The Oscar victories imply that globalization has finally reached the old-school film establishment.

The film is consciously global - the director and some of the lead actors reside in the U.K., while the youngest supporting cast members hail from the eponymous slums. To add to its recondite materials, the film's recurring anthem is the theme song of the TV show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" The film centers around an episode of a Mumbai-based version of "Millionaire," in which contestants answer multiple-choice questions in the hopes of winning 250 million rupees. The show serves to extend the critique of U.S.-style entertainment that perpetuates the illusion of quick fortune with little effort. Yet it also critiques those who criticize the show - after all, every opportunity to get rich quick is ostensibly a democratic opportunity. In other words, "Slumdog Millionaire" suggests that money can, in fact, heal old wounds, even those as deep as abject poverty. It may not be pretty, and it may smell foul as hell, but at least you can hope for something better.

In the hot seat of the "Millionaire" studios sits Jamal (Dev Patel), a twenty-something boy born in the slums of the most populated city in India. He is being tortured for his success on the television game show: someone accused him of cheating. After all, as a slum-dweller, those in power expect him to be ignorant. In order to save his life, or at least his primary bodily functions, Jamal is forced to explain to the police how he answered each question. Conveniently, each question corresponds with an episode from his life - and proceeds roughly in chronological order. As a result, he patches together his remarkable life for our viewing pleasure while saving his own skin. In short, the plot is a bit implausible. It seems more like "Crash" (2004) in that it sprinkles the viewer with demonstrative anecdotes that conspire to reach a transcendent climax - in fact, because "Crash" and "Slumdog" each won best picture at the Oscars, it seems that audiences value a film's message more than its narrative coherence. Still, "Slumdog" is not merely a pity vote - as was "Crash" for its supposedly audacious racial politics - it's also a strikingly emotional film.

We first experience Jamal's boyhood home in a rousing chase scene leading from a nearby airport - where his friends play ball on dusty runways - through the mountains of refuse that border the sprawling tin-roofed ocean where they reside. What makes little sense is why the airport police force finds it necessary to chase the boys through the hazardous slum landscape only to give up as soon as Jamal and his older brother, Salim, reach the warm embrace of their mother. Juxtaposed with the following scene, in which the police watch idly as a mob decimates the Muslim neighborhood, the message is clear. Nonetheless, the images are so explicitly juxtaposed that there is little room to engage with the material. Jamal's and Salim's mother dies in this initial attack. With hardly a flick of the eye, Jamal and Salim slip into an orphan's existence, allowing them to escape the city.

The film begins to thicken around the relationships of Jamal, Salim and Latika, a local orphan whom they find in the rain the evening of the mob attack. Jamal and Salim share a tense relationship - when Jamal invites Latika inside to escape the rain against Salim's wishes, Salim silently registers a festering grudge. Eventually, the threesome flees the slums due to the goodwill of an outlying orphanage.

Throughout the film, the intensity of the setting, the colors and the music create emotional landscapes that contradict at times the plot or dialogue. At the orphanage, the residing sense of doom still emanates from the introductory chapter in the slums. As a result, the jokes do not seem as funny and the sweeter moments often leave a bitter impression. The discomfort from these contradictions propel the film along its careening path - the whirlwind pace merely increases as the characters' relationships become more tangled.

At one point, back in the present, Jamal's interrogator informs him that his story is "bizarrely plausible." Indeed, the filmmakers hope we will think the same thing.

Although the first half of the film is rather poorly framed, the film's watershed moment nearly erases any lasting uneasiness. Jamal, now nearing twenty and separated from his brother, returns to his home city in order to find Latika, who disappeared before he could confess his love for her. As Jamal puts it, when he returns, "Bombay had turned into Mumbai" - the notorious slums of the 1990s had become the fast-paced, cosmopolitan city of the new millennium. Where he once combed through human waste in order to stay alive, he now peered up at new high-rise developments. Inspired by his quest for love and emboldened by his life experiences traveling throughout India, Jamal applies to compete on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" The show synthesizes his life into a window of a few minutes, when he has the opportunity to either answer a question or walk away with a large sum of money - the stakes increase with each correct answer. In spite of this contrivance, the force of director Danny Boyle's narration - exhibited famously in "Trainspotting" (1996) - reins together the disparate strands of the film and delivers the unforgettable images that punctuate the story. For better or for worse, this film will define many people's views of Mumbai for years.

It seems strange to say that in spite of the movie's deficiencies it rang an emotional chord, but it is a testament to changing winds within the movie industry. The film's lines of production and human capital span an incredible number of regional, ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Is the movie Indian, British, big-studio, small-budget (is $25 million small?), racist, imperialist, offensive, honest, na've, ignorant or well-informed? I have no idea. But I'm glad that we're here talking about it.

"Slumdog Millionaire" is now playing in town at the Marquis Theatre.