Movies

British director Danny Boyle is no stranger to success. His films include the cult classics such as Trainspotting and 28 Days Later. His film Shallow Grave was the most successful British film in 1995. Danny Boyles films take place in different realities and tackle with different psyches, but what his films have his common is his constant drive to draw out the humanity in these stories. Whether the film takes place in a post-apocalyptic world overrun with zombies or a junkie running from the mundane, Boyle makes us understand and recognize these film characters and make us sympathize or at least understand their motivations.

So it is with Slumdog Millionaire. The film starts by introducing us to the main character being in a jarring sequence that shows him being interrogated by the police. Hes been answering all the questions correctly and no one believes that hes done so through honest means. Here the story begins.
It begins with young Jamal Malik, and his brother Salim. The pair live in the slums with their mother, who is later killed in the Bombay riots while Jamal is only five years old. The slums are squalid and cramped, but Boyle manages to avoid making the film looking like poverty porn  the sight of poverty for povertys sake (Slum N Bling 68). The director even manages to capture a certain freedom and beauty in living in the slums by shooting a dynamic sequence that features the slum boys running from alleys to rooftops with the sunlight streaming down on them. It is in this scene that Boyle displays how the Western way of editing film such as the palette (soft yellows punctuated with mellow blues) and lighting can significantly change our perception of the slums.

After their mothers death, the brothers are plunged into survival mode as they scheme, scam and scramble their way from one day to another. What proves to be one of the films more humorous sequences at the same time provides a hard look at the reality of some of Indias poorest. Poverty in this film is portrayed as both a freedom and a limitation, as the camera both runs with the young boys and lingers on them as they shiver in abandoned shanties. Along the way they meet the third member of the party, Latika, who becomes the driving force of Jamals life.

Mainstream Bollywood films have themes that resonate within their audiences, and they include love, family conflict and corruption (Bindloss 59). These themes rise to the surface as Jamal and Malik take their own routes in handling their lot in life. While Malik proves to be the corrupted of the two, viewers do not necessarily hate him for itagain the director has impressed on us that while some decisions are indeed wrong, the film has shown us the whole breadth of what the brothers have experienced so far that we cannot necessarily fault them with what they have chosen for themselves.  Boyle brilliantly captures the reality of what it means to be part of Jamals world, and the script helps us be in the moment every step in the way, from the characters childhood until the inevitable breaking between the brothers.

Slumdog Millionaires cleverly-structure script is brought to life by a cast of actors who inhabit their roles wholly, and the transition from childhood to adulthood is achieved seamlessly and with an unrelenting sense of humanity. Each character is so unique and multi-faceted that when one actor transitions to another, there is no confusion on who the character is.

All throughout the flashbacks we learn as Jamal learns, each question answered earned through much strife and hardship. Every struggle hes been through leaves a taste in the audiences mouth that any sense of far-fetchedness is pushed aside Weve been through his life with him, and hes earned it, and we want him to win.

Boyles achievement in creating Slumdog Millionaire lies beyond the heartwarming underdog tale that we may have come to expect in movies like these Boyle does so much more by introducing us to the two versions of India that we know. There is the India in the travel brochures and there is the poverty-stricken image of India. Slumdog Millionaire marries these two images and show us the India as the Indians see it Disparate, opposite, but married and the same. There is violence, strife, abandonment, despair and abuse in Jamals childhood but there is also hope of getting out without losing your wits and even, daringly, your innocence. It speaks volumes of how Boyle and the scriptwriter Simon Beaufoy approached and handled the movies multi-faceted world and occupants with much respect and care. Jamal, Malik and Latika are all victimized but they never view themselves as downtrodden and victimized. Some images of the movie are jarring, but the other images that stay with us should be seemingly be ones of soul-crushing despair but Boyle manages to infuse a breathless kind of energy that spurs the film along. We as audiences are not allowed to feel pity for them, but we are invited to fully inhabit every moment of Jamals young life, and we feel more of a kinship for what should have been an alien world presented to us.

The true triumph of the movie is not that Jamal emerges from the quiz show as a millionaire but that he emerges from impossible odds with his humanity intact. His life leading up to the momentthe circumstances that could have easily led to his downfallbecome the thing that pulls him through. Like all good films, Slumdog Millionaire is an affirmation of our common humanity. Dont let the fairytale ending fool youthis movie is an honest, no-holds-barred look in a street urchins difficult life, but we all emerge from it feeling like winners. Its the power of cinema in its purest form.