It has been a long time since I have written a review, atleast on the group list. I thought with the considerable hype around Slumdog Millionaire, I should write a first day first show review.
The Story
The story is quite simple and must be familiar to people following the endless news coverage. It is about a kid from the slums, Jamal Malik, who is on the verge of winning Rs2 crores in Kaun Banega Crorepati. As he is just one question away from the final prize, he is whisked off to the police station overnight to be questioned if he has been cheating. He is subject to some heavy torture by the police, played by Saurabh Shukla and Irrfan Khan. Then he reveals how he has been able to answer each question as it corresponds to an event in his life. His brother, Salim and childhood love Latika, are with him on and off through his life and Jamal’s quest for Latika through brothels and gangsters dens becomes his obsession. He is finally released by the police and he goes on to win the prize and Latika too.
My Views
I am in two minds about SM, I really wanted to like the movie as it was a quasi-Indian movie which has been seeing considerable success and above all the themes, if not the sensibilities, are essentially Indian. The theme being essentially about the role of destiny (or fatalism in a negative sense) in our lives. However the movie for me was underwhelming, and that too by a huge margin.
One big note of caution before reading my views is that the context in which I have seen the movie was different than most audiences. I am one of the very few who have actually read the book on which the movie was based – Q&A by Vikas Swarup. The book, though not exceptional on literary merit, was excellent entertainment. I am cognizant of the pitfalls of comparing a book with the movie, however the pitfalls are likely to be fewer here as the book is largely a good story which should have been easy to film or adapt. However the filmmakers have changed the story around to make it more palatable to international audiences and reduce a few complexities.
However, one big grouse which I have is the sequencing of the questions to match the chronology of events in Jamal life. To elaborate, the first question might refer to something that happened to Jamal when he was 4 years, the second to something that happened when he was 5 and so on. This was really really stretching destiny. The book was interestingly structured where each question refers to a different phase of the protagonist’s life and we keep going back and forth till we have a neat mosaic of his life.
With the kind of structural experiments in narrative that we keep seeing nowadays (Following, Memento, 21 Grams, Irreversible etc) I thought that the story could have really merited a different flow to it.
Another factor which hinders an objective assessment is the feeling of déjà vu that I got when we see many of the scenes from the movie, whether the search for love or the grittier parts of the movie. I feel that, it might be new for international audiences, but people being handicapped for begging or young girls forced into prostitution is not something we are unaware of.
Unlike the comments of some faux nationalists or ignoramuses, my crib is not that we are presenting the seamy side of India for the foreign markets but that it is not seamy enough to make a more hard hitting statement atleast for Indian audiences (including me) who have been long been inured to these scenes. I felt that there was a flippancy in the way these gritty events were handled, never lingering for the audience to think, but used just to propel the story to the next question. There is a visceral movement to the movie, a very music-video psychedelic pace which makes it very difficult to dwell for a moment on the love just lost or the horrors recently seen. In editing terminology, the movie I am sure would be having a very low average length of shot (ALoS) (I really wanted to use that, never got a chance to do that until now)
Technically, the movie is top class. The photography was really award worthy. On the music, thought Rahman has done better work earlier. The actors are uniformly good, though I would take my hat off to the kids who played the younger Jamal, Salim and Latika.
However, nothing above should deter you from seeing the movie. In fact, you should see it and give me an opinion so that I can test my hypotheses of whether my reading of the book affected me against the movie and whether the movie is liked more by international audiences (a couple of Indian friends have seen it in the US and corroborate my views).
On the awards bit, I really would have loved to see the Dark Knight get more recognition. It is still the best movie I have seen in 2008. More on that later probably.
The Story
The story is quite simple and must be familiar to people following the endless news coverage. It is about a kid from the slums, Jamal Malik, who is on the verge of winning Rs2 crores in Kaun Banega Crorepati. As he is just one question away from the final prize, he is whisked off to the police station overnight to be questioned if he has been cheating. He is subject to some heavy torture by the police, played by Saurabh Shukla and Irrfan Khan. Then he reveals how he has been able to answer each question as it corresponds to an event in his life. His brother, Salim and childhood love Latika, are with him on and off through his life and Jamal’s quest for Latika through brothels and gangsters dens becomes his obsession. He is finally released by the police and he goes on to win the prize and Latika too.
My Views
I am in two minds about SM, I really wanted to like the movie as it was a quasi-Indian movie which has been seeing considerable success and above all the themes, if not the sensibilities, are essentially Indian. The theme being essentially about the role of destiny (or fatalism in a negative sense) in our lives. However the movie for me was underwhelming, and that too by a huge margin.
One big note of caution before reading my views is that the context in which I have seen the movie was different than most audiences. I am one of the very few who have actually read the book on which the movie was based – Q&A by Vikas Swarup. The book, though not exceptional on literary merit, was excellent entertainment. I am cognizant of the pitfalls of comparing a book with the movie, however the pitfalls are likely to be fewer here as the book is largely a good story which should have been easy to film or adapt. However the filmmakers have changed the story around to make it more palatable to international audiences and reduce a few complexities.
However, one big grouse which I have is the sequencing of the questions to match the chronology of events in Jamal life. To elaborate, the first question might refer to something that happened to Jamal when he was 4 years, the second to something that happened when he was 5 and so on. This was really really stretching destiny. The book was interestingly structured where each question refers to a different phase of the protagonist’s life and we keep going back and forth till we have a neat mosaic of his life.
With the kind of structural experiments in narrative that we keep seeing nowadays (Following, Memento, 21 Grams, Irreversible etc) I thought that the story could have really merited a different flow to it.
Another factor which hinders an objective assessment is the feeling of déjà vu that I got when we see many of the scenes from the movie, whether the search for love or the grittier parts of the movie. I feel that, it might be new for international audiences, but people being handicapped for begging or young girls forced into prostitution is not something we are unaware of.
Unlike the comments of some faux nationalists or ignoramuses, my crib is not that we are presenting the seamy side of India for the foreign markets but that it is not seamy enough to make a more hard hitting statement atleast for Indian audiences (including me) who have been long been inured to these scenes. I felt that there was a flippancy in the way these gritty events were handled, never lingering for the audience to think, but used just to propel the story to the next question. There is a visceral movement to the movie, a very music-video psychedelic pace which makes it very difficult to dwell for a moment on the love just lost or the horrors recently seen. In editing terminology, the movie I am sure would be having a very low average length of shot (ALoS) (I really wanted to use that, never got a chance to do that until now)
Technically, the movie is top class. The photography was really award worthy. On the music, thought Rahman has done better work earlier. The actors are uniformly good, though I would take my hat off to the kids who played the younger Jamal, Salim and Latika.
However, nothing above should deter you from seeing the movie. In fact, you should see it and give me an opinion so that I can test my hypotheses of whether my reading of the book affected me against the movie and whether the movie is liked more by international audiences (a couple of Indian friends have seen it in the US and corroborate my views).
On the awards bit, I really would have loved to see the Dark Knight get more recognition. It is still the best movie I have seen in 2008. More on that later probably.
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