Dorkgasm Gonzo Is God

It was Written, My Man
By
Michael C. Riedlinger
Editor-In-Chief

            When I saw Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave, back when it came out on VHS, I got the impression that this director would surprise me someday. Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, and Sunshine all proved to do just that, but I never thought he would win awards with his films. After all, this is a director who favors experimental visuals, photographers who take chances, and a frenetic editing style many associate with MTV (though those people would do well to look into Dziga Vertov). Yet, here he is with Slumdog Millionaire, sitting on 40 well-deserved awards, and 10 Academy Award nominations.

            Based on the novel Q&A by Vikas Swarup, Slumdog is a rags-to-riches story, but only on the surface. The meat of the story is in its unabashed exposure of street life in India’s slums. Choosing to film on location instead of in a studio, Boyle captures a side of India that many haven’t seen in the last twenty years, when Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! received a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film back in 1989. Yet, the film isn’t preaching at us like Deepa Mehta’s Water; the slums of Mumbai are simply part of a harsh reality here, no different than Glasgow, post-apocalyptic London, or the Sun.
As we follow the story of Jamal, a young man from the slums who manages to win big on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Everyone thinks he cheated, but the fact is that his hard life inadvertently led him to the answers he needed for the show. As the film flashes back through parts of Jamal’s life, we see the horrors he experienced with, and sometimes because of, his brother Salim. Boyle carefully shows us the development of Jamal’s love for a girl named Latika over the years, without indulging in unnecessary sentimentality. We get to follow the kids as they grow up, avoiding gangsters, pimps, and pissed off tourists along the way. The film never strays into “save the children” territory, and Dev Patel’s performance as Jamal is grounded in such a way that we feel the character’s pain without him coming across as pitiful.

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            Also great in this film is the soundtrack. Slumdog Millionaire isn’t a Bollywood musical, but it still has moments where you want to get up and dance. As the boys run a food racket from the roof of a train, M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” plays in the background, and the majority of A. R. Rahman’s score has a beat to please both long-time fans of Bombay techno and newcomers alike. There is a sense of youth and wonder conveyed by the music of this film tempered only by the harshness of the camera work. We begin to look at each flashback for clues to the trivia questions Jamal must answer, but we also want to see him rise out of the hell in which we have watched him grow up.

            By the end, Boyle has us, mind body and spirit. We literally teeter on the edge of our seats when he finally receives the final question. When he attempts to save Latika from the life she is stuck in, it is hard to discern whether we care because we are suckers for a love story, or because we have fallen in love with her ourselves. All of this is juxtaposed with the brutal violence of Mumbai gangsters and the prejudices of the middle-class against the poor. You can’t classify this film as a coming of age tale, or a love story, or even a crime movie because it manages to capture elements of all of them. Suffice to say, there’s a little something for everyone in a film like this, which is why it has won so many awards already. Boyle hasn’t disappointed the expectations I set down over a decade ago, and everything he wins for this film is well deserved.

Final Verdict (out of 5):