Slumdog Millionaire - Review

Director: Danny Boyle
Co-Director (India): Loveleen Tandan
Starring: Dev Patal/Ayush Mahesh Khedekar/Tanay Chheda
Written by: Simon Beaufoy/Vikas Swarup
Runtime: 2 hours

Let me ask you a question: who was the first president of the United States?

In your mind, you instantly drew the picture of George Washington. Now, what if we could go back and remember the exact moment that you learned George Washington was the first president of the United States? What would that tell us about your life?

Now let me ask you another question. And another. And every time you give me the answer, we go back and visit your life at the exact moment you learned those answers. If I ask enough questions, I will eventually have the entire story of your life.

This is Slumdog Millionaire's premise, and it's a beauty.

The movie is about Jamal Malik, an orphan in the slums of Mumbai. As a child, Malik is played by Ayush Mahesh Khedekar, as a teen by Tanay Chheda, and as an adult by Dev Patel. At the start of the film we learn that the adult Jamal is a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Problem: it is the night before the final million dollar round, and he is being tortured by the police. No one can believe that a poor boy (slumdog) has made it all the way to the million dollar question. It's impossible, because Jamal is supposed to be stupid. He's supposed to lose. Therefore he must be cheating.The movie is told in flashbacks, as Jamal tells the cop how he knows the answers to all of the questions. For instance, he knows that Benjamin Franklin is on the American $100 bill because he once gave one to a blind boy, who didn't believe the bill was real until he asked Jamal which face was on it. Naturally, Jamal had to look at the bill, read the name, say it, and remember it: "Benjamin Franklin."

This is a very good movie. It does not pull any punches, and it isn't afraid of being labelled "racist," or "insensitive," or any of the other stupid labels that ignorant people apply to things they don't want to know.

The film shows you that life is cheap in the slums of Mumbai. Children are purposefully maimed to increase their value as beggars. The majority of people live in squalor and poverty. There is nothing a slumdog won't do for a buck, and the only way to get ahead is to break the law, attach yourself to a criminal bigshot, and do his bidding. The rest is misery.

I remember travelling in Greece and seeing the incredibly large number of beggars there. The Greeks said it was because of the Albanians and Gypsies, but no matter. Point is, Europe is rife with begging children. It's terrible. Nobody wants to talk about it, but there it is. Anyway, I remember Greece was particularly bad because most of their beggars were wounded. Faces burnt, arms and legs missing, eyes poked out.I remember thinking, "It is impossible that all of the beggars were born as cripples." Besides, you aren't born a burn victim. Something has to burn you to turn your face into a hideous mass of flesh. So how many children can possibly be caught in accidental house fires, then turn around and begin begging?

The answer, of course, is that their wounds aren't accidental at all. They are inflicted by monstrous human beings that lop off limbs to increase the sympathy factor of their slaves. When the children return "home" after a day's begging, they give their loot to their masters, go to sleep, then get up and do it all over again. The only children that avoid disfigurement are children that are used in the sex trade, though their fate is of course no better and maybe worse.

During my time in Europe and Asia, I saw many disfigured adults, too. But their disfigurement was old. The burns had lost any trace of pink, and the arm stumps looked rough and calloused. They were children once, and their lives had always been pain and misery. I distinctly remember one man, in the middle of a well-to-do road, begging. He had no legs and only one arm. His face was positively hideous to behold. He just sat there staring into space, with his one hand outstretched, Sphinx-like. A half-hour later I walked by, and as far as I could tell he hadn't moved an inch.

Sounds awful, doesn't it? It is. And I haven't seen a film show this side of Europe/Asia's slums before, at least not in this much detail. Usually it's sex trade stuff, and the hero saves the day. Not here.

In many ways, my travels have taught me that the US and Canada have nothing on many other countries when it comes to troubles. Economic crisis? Please. While we suffer through our current economic crisis by avoiding Starbucks, there's tens of thousands of children in so-called "developed countries" that suffer an economic crisis whenever their missing face only draws a couple of Euro per day.

I have a feeling that Slumdog Millionaire will be remembered as a feel-good story about a slumdog that makes good. For me, the first half-hour of the film that shows what is happening to these children is what really matters. The film deserves credit for this.

You should see this movie. It has its moment of feel-good fancy, but it is also a very real, very disturbing, and very uplifting film. The love story is a bit BS, but what love story isn't? When it comes to the life of a slumdog, the movie doesn't lie to you.

One final note: I wrote a while back that it was refreshing to see Fincher, an "action director," pull off Benjamin Button. Same thing goes for Danny Boyle, who made his name directing sci-fi and gory horror flicks. Now that Slumdog Millionaire and Benjamin Button are both up for Oscars, it looks like the "action directors" have decided to beat the artsy crowd at their own game. More power to them.