Slumdog Millionaire2009; UK; 120 min.
Director: Danny Boyle, Loveleen Tandan
Screenplay: Simon Beaufoy, Vikas Swarup
Music: various artists
Cast:
Jamal Malik - Dev Patel
Prem Kumar - Anil Kapoor
Sergeant Srinivas - Saurabh Shukla
Director - Rajendranath Zutshi
Vision Mixer - Jeneva Talwar
Latika - Freida Pinto
Police Inspector - Irrfan Khan
Youngest Salim - Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail
Youngest Jamal - Ayush Mahesh Khedekar
I had heard amazing things about "Slumdog Millionaire." I think that whenever you go into a film with high expectations, it's hard to come out of the film absolutely loving it (case and point, "Casablanca"...). I really did enjoy "Slumdog Millionaire," but I didn't think that it was the best film I've ever seen in my life. I went to go see the film with two other film students, and we had a lot of fun talking about it afterwards and thinking about it from a film perspective. "Slumdog Millionaire" is the non-linear story of Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) and his rise from the slums. Eventually, Jamal ends up on his country's version of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" and that's where the story begins. He is being questioned by the police and is being tortured because no one can believe that Jamal could have achieved what he did on the show without cheating. As the audience is taken through the show, we learn how Jamal knows the answers to all of the questions. We flashback to his traumatic childhood and the rest of his life. I cannot comprehend people who have called this a feel-good film. As one of my friends said after watching it, "This makes me feel horrible about myself." And it does. Jamal's childhood is absolutely brutal and upsetting. The story does have a sort of decent resolution for Jamal. The film ends with the credits and a Bollywood-style music video, which I thought was inappropriate at the time. I did enjoy the little video though.
I definitely overlooked the costumes and sets while I was watching this film. Everything looked so real that I just disregarded it (I don't know if that makes sense...). It's hard to imagine all of the work that went into those aspects of the film. Everything looked absolutely effortless and smooth. The scenery and costumes were so perfect for the film. The cinematography was great. The film was filled with canted angles. It was actually ridiculous how many there were. Considering the fact that canted angles are supposed to show characters in distress, the shots were apropos to the plot. The soundtrack to the film was pretty good. I was a little taken aback when "Paper Planes," by M.I.A., started playing in the background. My fellow filmers and I all started laughing in confusion. The lyrics of the song did somewhat apply to the events in the film. It was just shocking to see such a commercial, mainstream song about drugs being played while two little boys were begging and riding on trains.
I really did enjoy this film a lot. When you step back and consider all of the factors that went into this film in particular, it's amazing how smooth this film looks. I love the plot about the game show and the structure of the film. In psychology, we learned about something called group polarization. (I know this doesn't directly relate to my blog but I had to post it.) Group polarization is when your opinions are further enhanced when discussing an issue and sharing like opinions with a group of people. I think that what happened while writing this post was a bit of blog polarization. While at the beginning of this film I was somewhat enthusiastic about "Slumdog Millionaire," now I'm sort of like, "Wow! This was actually amazing!" The idea of blog polarization is my contribution to the blogging world, I guess... So on that note, I would definitely recommend "Slumdog Millionaire," but be warned, this is not a feel good film (unless you're the sadistic type and enjoy seeing people being blinded and beaten...)!
iRate: 4.5/5 answers (Oh, blog polarization!)
