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Slumdog Millionaire
Feb. 28th, 2009 10:56 amA couple of friends and I watched Slumdog Millionaire last night. Ironically for a film in which the stars frequently do illegal things, we watched it on a bootleg DVD.
The movie is the story of Jamal, his older brother Salim, and a girl named Latika. The three kids are Muslim slumdwellers (AKA "slumdogs") in Mumbai, India. At a young age, they are orphaned at some Hindu-Muslim riots; riots in which the police literally can't be troubled to leave their trucks. The story then takes on the epic nature of a Dickens tale, complete with Dickensian poverty. (One scene shows a friend of the kids being blinded in an orphanage, as blind kids make better beggars.) After a series of improbable adventures and coincidences, Jamal wins 20 million rupees on the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" and reunites with Latika.
On one hand, the story is a merely modern version of Oliver Twist. On the other hand, there's a reason we still read Charles Dickens, even though he was the Stephen King of his time, while Dicken's more "artistic" contemporary Edward "dark and stormy night" Bulwer-Lytton is the remembered as the butt of a joke. Dickens wrote good stuff, Bulwer-Lytton did not.
Slumdog Millionaire is not very flattering to India, revealing, besides the grinding poverty, a massive class divide. Jamal works at a call center as a "chai-wallah," or guy who fetches tea for the real workers. In one scene, the call center workers are being trained on some British cultural trivia, and Jamal is asked a question, which he answers correctly. The trainer tells the instructees words to the effect of "if even a chai-wallah knows the answer it's not a tough question."
At any rate, I found Slumdog Millionaire a powerful movie, and recommend it highly.
The movie is the story of Jamal, his older brother Salim, and a girl named Latika. The three kids are Muslim slumdwellers (AKA "slumdogs") in Mumbai, India. At a young age, they are orphaned at some Hindu-Muslim riots; riots in which the police literally can't be troubled to leave their trucks. The story then takes on the epic nature of a Dickens tale, complete with Dickensian poverty. (One scene shows a friend of the kids being blinded in an orphanage, as blind kids make better beggars.) After a series of improbable adventures and coincidences, Jamal wins 20 million rupees on the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" and reunites with Latika.
On one hand, the story is a merely modern version of Oliver Twist. On the other hand, there's a reason we still read Charles Dickens, even though he was the Stephen King of his time, while Dicken's more "artistic" contemporary Edward "dark and stormy night" Bulwer-Lytton is the remembered as the butt of a joke. Dickens wrote good stuff, Bulwer-Lytton did not.
Slumdog Millionaire is not very flattering to India, revealing, besides the grinding poverty, a massive class divide. Jamal works at a call center as a "chai-wallah," or guy who fetches tea for the real workers. In one scene, the call center workers are being trained on some British cultural trivia, and Jamal is asked a question, which he answers correctly. The trainer tells the instructees words to the effect of "if even a chai-wallah knows the answer it's not a tough question."
At any rate, I found Slumdog Millionaire a powerful movie, and recommend it highly.
