Ok, so the toast of the Season seems to be the surprise superhit Slumdog Millionaire and I have totally gone ga-ga over the movie, so how could I possibly NOT write anything about it on my blog!
So it all started a few weeks back when I hadn't seen the flick and a few overseas colleagues of mine had and one of them said that its probably going to be the most widely watched movie about India at present, so it shouldn't have shown certain things the way they were (read grim reality), as he was having to answer quite a few odd questions at work about India and if things really were that way out here.
Well, being a big fan of the book the movie is based on, I had to jump into the fray defending something I had no busines defending then! The movie was said to have portrayed the real grimy world of India, slums, poverty, shitholes and jumping into them et al, but THAT is India as well I believe, the jhuggis lining the 'posh' complexes, filled with BPLs who help me run my house so I can keep raising my NetWorth..the people who don't let me throw away nethin saying they will either use it or sell it be it food, bottles, or even mere 'disposable' curd containers! The movie, I had heard, showed their way of life, albeit even darker sometimes but then Darkness sells, Death & loss reaps higher returns at the BO..maybe thats why. But yes, for people abroad facing weird questions, they could come back to India for a change?!
And then I watched the movie. Boy, WHATTA movie and WHATTAN Acting! With the lead Dev Patel doing full justice to his role, with the rest supporting perfectly in harmony, especially the subtly crafty Anil Kapoor as the Quiz show host, this movie rocks!
Ok, so SM IS a Masala movie but one thats made with its heart in the right place..I don't understand the moviemaking technicalities except maybe a lil bit of cinematography, editing and aptness of background scores, and this movie scored well on those angles, so for me, this is IT! Some people are blasting the movie for exposing India as full of squalor, as 'poverty porn' (Did this guy see somethin we didnt!!), Someone Big said it wrongly depicts "India as a third world dirty underbelly and that such places abound in developed nations too" Of Course! BUT..then this movie is not about a developed nation, or for that matter, about a developing one either...it is a movie about 1 young man, his struggle, his survival, his dreams and his will or sheer desperation to make it come true. Now Jamal just happens to be a slumdweller or at least start as one, so the movie had to show poverty, dejection, loss and the slums the way they are and trust me, as someone who did her summers doing mosquito repellant research in SEC A,B,C, I have seen some of the worst slums in Mumbai, Dharavi et al...and it IS this and worse..so it may be realism, it may be a tad too in-your-face, it may be a lil 'eeyoooh' in places but a fine film it still is...and with Rahman's mindblowing music added on, its magic, in cinemascope :).
And for this I hope it gets ALL the awards its been nominated for...esp AR, who's the current Ruler of Indian film music.
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