Yesterday i had the pleasure of viewing one of the most beautifully crafted movies in my lifetime. It was the much critically acclaimed SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, currently nominated for 10 Oscars for this year's academy awards presentation including best picture.
What evokes me about this movie was how too good to be true things can be, especially when the odds are against so many things to a simplistic group of people out there helmed by deplorable background made worse by their tragic stories waiting to be told to the outside world. As what the South African based Indian diplomat, Mr Vikas Swarup whose Q & A novel was based on, remarked that this story is just fiction ,but i see the story as a magical revelation and example of a typical Indian facts of life. There is always more life's essence personified in bad and poor times i supposed.
What struck me most is the sincere portrayal of hardship and poverty earned by its dwellers of a third world country. Although India is a an awakening superpower with its huge population as a sure source of capital to support it whether socially or economically, i find it very distressful to see the true colors of life's agony and desperation as depicted quite vividly in the film.I have not been to India personally but through the years i have heard and seen(through the media )about the unbalanced social decree of humanity in that part of the world truly afflict my heartstrings in the most unfeigned manner.- hunger,poor sanitation, overcrowding,crime & corruption - all of which seem to denote such common third world plagues and malaises.
It was about how adults of the underworld took advantage of helpless miserly children to achieve their evil means, immersed and tainted against a slum community background that was heavy and brutal in life's shortcomings where nobody cares and everyone led an ostensibly honest and carefree life. You cannot trust anyone who is kind to you because they will implicate your life so as to lead their very own.
True also, as what the author mentioned over CNN today as interviewed by Kristie Lu Stout that it was not important if a person is uneducated as long as he is street smart and witty. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is also about self dignity. A person will go to great lengths and strengths just to achieve his far fetched dreams using all means of sacrifices and lifeline support.The latter goes on with a little bit of luck.
I love this movie because it speaks volume about human sufferings in a develop society although the author may not really have live through that sort of life to relive each of the characters embodiment. The backdrop of events happening here could even be happening in the other places like Latin America, Africa and even the Philippines or Indonesia for that matter.India's popular reputation as a call centre hub in this global world and their knack for reality TV shows add to a more realistic approach about the world of glamor which everyone likes to be part of in contrast to the poverty humdrum and the shadows they lived in.
The heroine(Freida Pinto)in the movie does not justify the compatibility of the hero's (Dev Patel) supposedly strong willed character and naturally genuine acting experience. According to Danny Boyle, the movie director the cast were roped in from the normal stable of actors in the Bollywood scene. I remembered the actor (Irrfan Khan)who played the chief inspector role. He was also featured in another movie ( The Namesake) about a professional Indian citizen who migrated to the US searching for the American Dream and who later brought along his wife who had to accept and face the cross cultural differences in order to raise her own family singlehandedly soon after his own death.
The music by AR Rahman is undoubtedly well suited to the scenes depicted in this fast moving teeth clenching and sometimes heart wrenching story.I hope the SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE will win an oscar for Best Picture even if the other 9 nominations fail to achieve.And maybe it was written for such a success.
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'Slumdog' child actors to get new homes
Wednesday, February 25, 2009 3:25:00 AM PT, Reuters
MUMBAI (Reuters Life!) – The two main child actors from "Slumdog Millionaire" are to receive new homes from the authorities after the small-budget movie swept the Oscars, winning eight Academy Awards.
The Mumbai homes will go to Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, who played the young roles of the movie's central characters, Latika and Salim, in the rags-to-riches romance about a poor Indian boy competing for love and money on a TV game show.
"These two children have brought laurels to the country, and we have been told that they live in slums, which cannot even be classified as housing," said Gautam Chatterjee, head of the state-run Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority.
Authorities did not say where the home would be only that there would be apartments and near a "prime location."
Ali, 8, currently lives in a tiny hovel in a rubbish strewn slum near railway tracks in India's financial hub. Ismail sleeps under a polythene sheet-covered roof in the same slum. Open sewers run nearby and both homes have no running water.
The movie, based in Mumbai, took home eight awards from the Oscars including best picture and best director for Britain's Danny Boyle.
But in the leadup to Sunday's Oscars, the movie's success around the globe was overshadowed by objections in India to its name which some Indians find offensive, its depiction of the lives of impoverished Indians, and the treatment of the cast.
There was an outcry after pictures emerged of the child stars living in squalor despite the $15 million movie earning about $100 million since its North American release last November.
But since the Oscars, India's media has been caught in a patriotic frenzy and politicians have jumped on the bandwagon to praise Indians involved in the film.
Boyle and producer Christian Colson have flatly rejected claims of exploiting children for the movie.
They said the children were paid above local Indian wages and enrolled in school for the first time with a fund set up to pay for their education, medical emergencies and "basic living costs."
Fox Searchlight Pictures, the 20th Century Film Fox studio behind the film, paid for visas, travel and accommodation for nine children to fly to Los Angeles for the Oscars.
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MORE SLUMDOG SUCCESSES
"Jai Ho," the rousing finale from Slumdog Millionaire, is shaping up as a hit. A.R. Rahman's original soundtrack version of the song (featuring M.I.A) re-enters Hot Digital Songs at #76, while an English-language rendition by Rahman and the Pussycat Dolls titled "Jai Ho! (You Are My Destiny)" is on deck and will debut next week. (It enters the Hot 100 at #100 this week and will make a huge jump next week.) The Slumdog soundtrack rebounds from #48 to #22 on The Billboard 200 in the immediate aftermath of the Academy Awards, where the movie amassed eight awards, including Best Picture. The album sold 21,000 copies, most of them (12,000) digitally. The sales tracking week ended Sunday night, the same night as the Oscar telecast. So there's every reason to think that the album will climb much higher. If Slumdog breaks into the top 10, it will become the first soundtrack to an Oscar-winning Best Picture to reach the top 10 only after the Oscar telecast since Rocky 32 years ago. Just how high will Slumdog go? Raising Sand, the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss collaboration, vaulted from #69 to #2 last week in the wake of winning five Grammys. Slumdog may well pull off a similar surge next week, especially given the success of the film, which will top the $100 million mark at the box-office this weekend.
"Jai Ho" is the third Oscar Best Song winner that was introduced in a foreign language. The song, in Hindi, follows "Al Otro Lado Del Rio," sung in Spanish by Jorge Drexler in the 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries, and "Never On Sunday," sung in Greek by Melina Mercouri in the 1960 movie of the same name. Proving there is nothing new under the sun, the English-language rendition of of "Jai Ho" by Rahman and the Pussycat Dolls echoes the Chordettes' English-language cover version of "Never On Sunday" 48 years ago. The female group, best known for the 1954 charmer "Mr. Sandman," had a top 15 hit with the song in the summer of 1961.
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'Slumdog' shifts the rhythm of the Oscars
by Hunter Gros, February 26, 2009
Few mainstream movies have the ability to transport a western audience and emotionally invest them in a world with different cultural values. “Slumdog Millionaire” is the exception, providing the audience a unique opportunity to place themselves among the issues plaguing most developing countries, religious violence, gangs, poverty and mountains of garbage.
The film follows the story of protagonist Jamal, played by Dev Patel, and his dream run on the Indian version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” The catch is his background as an uneducated member of the Mumbai slums. The authorities become skeptical as to how he could possibly know the answer to every question.
In his blog, Arindam Chaudhuri, editor-in-chief of The The Sunday Indian, heavily criticized the film.
“Don’t see ‘Slumdog Millionaire.’ It sucks…all in all, the film is nothing but an endorsement of an erstwhile imperial mindset of the West and its blinkered vision of India.”
"Slumdog Millionare” certainly has a semi-western spin, as the hero and heroine wind up together in typical Hollywood fashion. The concept of such true love is almost taboo in India, as 90 percent of marriages are arranged. What the movie lacks in factual context is made up for by director Danny Boyle’s intention to introduce India to a large western audience.
After watching the film, many comment on the piles of garbage, the houses stacked upon each other and the outhouses as if these were simple aesthetics to increase the dilapidated atmosphere. Sadly, this depiction of India is real. Having just returned from a winter term course in India, I applaud the Boyle for placing the audiences in Mumbai and Uttar Padesh.
Perhaps the best thing this movie offers audiences is a small peek into India’s often-ignored Bollywood, the largest film industry in the world. Bollywood films are at times more like attending a circus than watching a film. The over-the-top action, dance scenes and random songs bring a lighthearted, theatrical element missing in many western films. Yes, Bollywood films are cheesy, but they’re also entertaining. Isn’t that why everyone goes to see a movie?
It was a ceremony where the record-breaking, critically acclaimed “Dark Knight” wasn’t nominated for Best Picture and the Academy favored veteran actor Sean Penn less for his work in “Milk” and more for his body of work.
“Slumdog Millionaire” escaped from western stereotypes and made anyone who worked on the film feel like 20 million rupees. “Slumdog” walked away with awards for best adapted screenplay, cinematography, sound mixing, editing, score, song, directing and best picture.
The ceremony was not the most entertaining show (the sound was horrible throughout). But seeing the joy of all those who won for “Slumdog” gave the public the small hope that the Oscars are about more than politics and narrow viewpoints.
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