Review: Slumdog Millionaire

The story is good Indian pulp.  I’ve seen many a comparison to Dickens, and while I haven’t read that much Dickens I see where the reviewers are coming from.  The setup is a very approachable one for a Western audience: a kid from the slums has an incredible streak on India’s who wants to be a millionaire (although strictly speaking, the grand prize is 20 million rupees).  Given he came out of nowhere, this raises suspicions of cheating, and the story is the episodic tale of how he figures out each answer.

The tale rather effective plays on the viewers emotion, although it’s not so sophisticated in the characterization department.  The main traits driving Jamal, the Muslim Indian slumdog hero, are persistence and the fact that he’s the main character and thus has a destiny.  The villains tend to be real mustache twirlers with the exception of Salim, Jamal’s brother and sometime nemesis.  He’s probably the most interesting of the bunch.  The love interest Latika is better than the the cipher I expected based on some reviews, particularly in her fairly spunky younger incarnations.

The appeal of the film, aside from just being a solid and cinematic tale, is the exotic setting.  Given the range of the story, I suspect parts of it are exotic even to much of the Indian audience, with the unfamiliarity being greater for Americans.  That said the characterization and perspective are all local, unlike say Darjeeling Express or similar travel pictures.  On the other hand, aside from an awesome end credit sequence, the film lacks the musical numbers typical in Indian filmmaking.  I’d learned a while back the reason they’re so common: Bollywood makes its money off soundtrack sales.  In this case, even without the musical numbers, the film really does it’s job there, the soundtrack is prominent at several points and is terrific, I’ll be buying myself a copy.

Finally, the film is based in Mumbai and the hero is Muslim, so there’s an obvious resonance with recent events.  The film does touch on those issues but more on how inequity tends to lead to crime rather terrorism.  Even so, I do think understanding the slums is key and the film is an easy place to start.

Picture from the official film website.