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With all the noise surrounding it -- Critic's Choice, Golden Globe, SAG Awards and now the The Oscar -- it's a bit hard to think clearly about Slumdog Millionaire and how I felt about it when I first saw it about a month ago.
I vaguely recall reading about SM on an Indian news website: Mumbai model and Bollywood hopeful Freida Pinto makes her acting debut in a Hollywood movie. Months later SM came to America. Since in our house, I have the exclusive job of picking out Bollywood and indi films that are worth a 45-minute drive and $10x2, I need to read a great many reviews and news clips before making a recommendation. The superlatives that SM had started drawing gave me confidence that it couldn't be that bad (at that time, I did not have Indian reviews to compare them with). And, honestly, I was curious. So we took a chance.
My mind is now a haze, full of critiques and scrutiny and discussions about the movie, both here and in India. I am going to attempt to rid my thoughts of all the kudos and criticisms and try to piece together my first reaction to SM, as an Indian viewer: first day, first thoughts and hence honest.
The day of the show: No doubt we were skeptical about an American movie made by a British on an Indian theme with slums for a background: 'Another one on slums. This one will surely pick up a few awards'. But as I watched with my neck craned upward and backward (I HATE the front rows) in an over-packed San Francisco theater, my worst fears disappeared and I was pleasantly surprised by the way the story was told. When we walked out of the theater, I asked S how he liked the movie. He shrugged and said, "It's okay, I guess. It was good."
It wasn't spontaneous for me either. I started piecing together what I liked about it (which I have listed below). But then came the inevitable question that S and I were left wondering about: 'So why all the Oscar buzz? Maybe it doesn't have good enough competition. No American Beauty or Crash this year?'
The movie: First, I was impressed by the story-telling. (\Impressed enough to want to watch director Danny Boyle's Trainspotting. For the first time, I found a story based in India told simply, just as it is, with no emphasis on stereotypes -- despite using some of them -- and no judgment. It is a fantastical rags-to-riches story based on a Indian novel and nowhere in the film could I hear or see Boyle's British take on the subject. More often than not, we make judgments about how people living in such circumstances should feel or view the world. That somehow, by being poor and having hard lives in a wealthy dream city like Mumbai, they loose the right to be happy and must necessarily be projected as a gloomy, hopeless lot. Which is why I can't agree with the criticism that Boyle celebrates or aestheticizes poverty in SM. No, I didn't think so. Boyle didn't make that call. I could see the struggle (the slums were real), I could feel their pain and their desperation. I also saw their uncanny spirit to overcome, to live, to accept. That feels genuinely Indian to me.
However, for me as an Indian, there was nothing novel about the story. I am aware of the slums in Mumbai, I know about the begging racket, the communal tensions, the underworld, the land sharks, the call-centers, the fantasy, the escapism, the big dreams and the love. Bollywood, in its own sanitized way, pays its due to such subjects from time to time, and Boyle acknowledges that some of the films influenced his work. But this is an English movie made for a Western audience (I had never heard the word "slumdog", who, by the way, spoke English with a British accent in Mumbai), so naturally the appeal and context are different.
The music: It was perfect. This may not be A.R. Rahman's best, but it worked beautifully for SM. Rahman, who has regaled Indian filmgoers with such brilliant music for so many years, deserves all the credit and I am so happy for this recognition. Each time I thought I had had enough of Rahman and that he was getting repetitive, he took me to a new musical
