“Slumdog Millionaire” (2008)

Some critics obtain great pleasure from being naysayers.  It is always more likely that one’s voice will be heard if you are saying something distinct from the crowd.  How better to make a name for yourself than as a fearless revisionist out to slaughter scared cultural cows?  The great Pauline Kael, for example, made her own reputation by despoiling that of the infinitely greater Orson Welles, writing an article which questioned his authorship of “Citizen Kane”.

I would not put myself in the same category as Kael.  Nor do I necessarily see myself as some kind of elitist out to pour scorn on populist movies and warmhearted crowd pleasers.  That said, I have to confess that this year’s BAFTA winner and front runner for the Oscars, 2008’s ‘little movie that could’, the rags to riches tale of a poor little Bombay wretch who gets his chance at untold wealth as well as to win the heart of the love of his life, left me cold.

Well, mostly cold.  If it were possible to separate “Slumdog Millionaire” from the hype and just see the thing as a low budget Danny Boyle film, with all the standard strengths and weakness that the hyperkenetic director brings to any project, it would perhaps qualify as minor entertainment.  You might be able to overlook the fact that is overblown, melodramatic, never for one moment credible, and, if you want to be really harsh, some kind of unintended insult to the actual underprivileged of contemporary India.

The first part is structured around an extended torture session.  It is slowly revealed that our hero, Jamal Malik, is being interrogated by the local constabulary under suspicion of cheating on the “Who Wants to be Be a Millionaire” television show.  When he persists in declaring his innocence the Hindu bobbies get out a battery and wire poor old Jamal up to it.

The nonchalance with which these scenes are played out astonished me.  Have we become so desensitised after Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the Bush Administration’s fondness for water boarding and beating ’suspects’ senseless that torture can be casually slotted into a family film without any kind of reflection on the morality of the act or condemnation of the perpetrators?  “Slumdog Millionaire” suggests that such things are standard operating procedure for the Indian police force, who are, of course, in the pocket of the rich and powerful.  They torture at the behest of the television producers, as though game show competence was indicative of terrorist sympathies.

After a series of flashbacks have demonstrated that Jamal’s life experiences have coincidentally equipped him with the knowledge required to do well in quiz competitions he is released to return to the set and keep his appointment with destiny.  Miraculously unharmed and unembittered, he bears no malice toward either those who have electrocuted him or those who ordered it.  This must be part of what the “Rolling Stone” critic Peter Travers calls the film’s “magic realism”, the fantastically unlikely aspect that “lets in hope without compromising integrity”.

If the film has any integrity it is as a complete and utter fantasy.  Its reflection on the genuine problems that beset India - the extremes of wealth and poverty, religious tensions and violence, the cruel exploitation of children, and widespread corruption - is at best cursory.  Boyle’s MTV editing style, handheld camera work and god awful pop music soundtrack choices do next to nothing to elucidate these issues, distancing us from what could have been truly dramatic material.
 

A young cast do very well with underwritten parts but Boyle is only really interested in developing character in the most superficial, melodramatic manner.  The narrative proceeds at break neck speed, seldom pausing for breath, all at the expense any kind of emotional engagement with the tragedies depicted. 
There was one moment I liked a lot.  When the big, bad gangster baddie who has taken Jamal’s one true love as the Hindu equivalent of a ‘moll’ returns to his mansion unexpectedly he meets her nervous greeting with the blunt suggestion that she should “shut up” because “the cricket is on”.  He then loses himself in a television set and the exploits of Tendulkar and company.  There was something about the sequence, referencing the importance of the national game, the brutality of the comparatively new monied class together with more longstanding sexism that summed up, albeit briefly, aspects of modern India.
Another cricket reference must be equally intended.  Jamal’s evil brother is named after Salim Malick, one of Pakistan’s most notoriously corrupt players of the game.   It is a subtle joke in a film where subtlety is otherwise non existent.
Whatever its shortcomings “Slumdog Millionaire” at least saves its Bollywood elements for the end credits.  By that stage, after a climax in which the obvious happens two to three times over and everything is awash with feel good vibes, a bit of cliched mass dancing is hardly unexpected and tonally acceptable.  The sequence is set in a railway station, ironically emphasising just how far director Danny Boyle has fallen from his “Trainspotting” days.