Andrew McMurtryREVIEW: Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
February 10th 2009 03:52
“Slumdog Millionaire” is a rush of colour, filled with stereotypically Indian sounding music and industrious work of the people living in the slums of Mumbai. It is a pauper to a prince story with a rather unique version of the slums of India. The use of the game show “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” to tell the story is fantastically done. The game show is one of the highest rating shows in India and, while a western audience sees $1 million as a large sum of money, for an Indian kid from a poor family working as a tea server in a call centre, it is completely life changing and is, as the movie says, more than anyone he works for will ever earn. But to Jamal (Dev Patel), the money doesn’t mean anything. He just has to stay as long as he can so that he may have a chance at love with his childhood sweetheart.
The set up of “Slumdog Millionaire” is as follows: Jamal took a place on this show and reached the final question. How could a kid from the Slums with no education know any of these questions? He must be cheating, or so the authorities think. After trying to torture his secret out of him, Jamal sits with the police chief and explains how he knew the answer each question. As he explains it, it unlocks the lives of Jamal and his older, somewhat cruel brother Salim (eventually played by Madhur Mittal). Interwoven into this is a love story with a girl named Latika (Freida Pinto), who met Jamal and Salim following the murder of their parents in a religious attack. Jamal promised Latika that he would never leave her behind after the events of their early lives. After losing contact with her and her getting mixed up with a crime lord who Salim worked for, the only way Jamal sees of getting her back is staying on the show as long as he can so that she can come and find him.
The thing that startled me about this film was the way director Danny Boyle captured the vibrancy and industriousness of the slums of India. It was really inspired the way that he caught the shanty style town in the beginning and showed later on how quickly it was growing. The tracking shot across the rooftops of the slums when Jamal and Salim were children juxtaposed with the enormous high-rise, buildings in when they are older really show how India is growing and developing quite quickly. But not even that, the way that everyone tries to get money in anyway they can, including begging and forcing people to pay to use a toilet. It really is startling that anyone could live like that, especially in this day and age. Despite this, it showed that they did the best with the situation with what they had. The fact that he doesn’t hold back with some of the issues, such as the terrible conditions the boys grow up in.
“Slumdog Millionaire” is a shining example of how to make a movie on a low budget. Sure, $15 million seems like a lot of money but compared to other movies like “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, which cost $150 million, it is next to nothing. The other startling thing about this movie is that it was set to go straight to DVD. Lucky it didn’t. This is a really good film, with a really good heartfelt love story at its centre. Mixed together with heartbreak, betrayal, murder and the horrible conditions the young people of India grow up under; it really gives a unique Hollywood view of the trials and tribulations of life in the slums and how the human condition still survives in the face of overwhelming adversity and poverty. The underlying sense of hope given off by Jamal remaining the nice, innocent yet somewhat scarred boy he was in the beginning, who only wants to be with his love, while his brother branched off into organised crime, is what made this film most enjoyable for me. I’d give this film 4 out of 5.
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