by Lily Tien-Jung Wu Oh YES, in this film you’ll be satisfied by just about everything you are looking for: a happy ending, love songs, hot-shot cute actors and actresses, good-and-evil gun-shot chasing, and maybe more. However, it didn’t win 4 Golden Globes and 8 Oscars for JUST that. A garish and overly-abundant rush of color, sound and motion strike your senses awake in the latest hit, Slumgdog Millionaire. Directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting and Sunshine), Slumdog has made this British director’s resurrection the best time of his life. Despite the fact that some have called him “the whiz-bang fabulist” and others “the chutzpah populist,” after watching the new movie we all may say, “Who cares?” Yep, Slumdog is undoubtedly a feel-good success — that doesn’t involve Abba songs.
Based on the novel Q&A, by Vikas Swarup, Slumdog Millionaire is structured around a brutal police interrogation of Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a terrified teenager from the Mumbai gutters. Once a discriminated chaiwalla (a tea-serving job), Jamal enters the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and is only one correct answer away from winning 20 million Rupees (14 million NTD). 18-year-old Jamal seems like an unlikely winning candidate and is consequently arrested for cheating. “What the hell can a slum boy possibly know?” We’re all curious. Yet there is no time to ask, as the sheriff (Irrfan Khan) stuns us with a series of incredibly inhumane torture-techniques. A fast-paced story, Slumdog does not stay to plumb the depths of pain and ugliness. Quite the contrary, it giddily bounces from one horror to the next. Jamal’s winning is a modern fairytale of how a pauper struggles to rise and become a prince. And, so, another rags-to-riches wish is fulfilled. It is a Holly-Bollywood version of the Oprah Winfrey (a famous American talk show host) fable sprayed with colorful sprinkles of poverty, desperation and hunger reminiscent of Third World squalor. Regardless of its cliché search-for-love, dream-come-true plot and picturesque vision of the ghetto, the scene in which slum dwellers sift through filthy garbage is poignant enough to reminds us of how terrible living conditions can be for the discards of society. Jamal’s harsh life is revealed in flashbacks of exhilarating and unnerving encounters. Here, Boyle successfully creates a significant style by releasing the past and present layer by layer like tectonic plates. It’s like a fluid view of time and space, shifting between his memories and the tasks on hand. From the portrait on a 100US$ bill to the figure of a Hindu goddess—all the knowledge Jamal needs is offered by the hardships of his life. Despite what the critics say, the credibility that is offered by setting the film in Mumbai is dampened by the serious social tragedy occurring on a daily basis. The truth is: Everyday at traffic lights, beaming bazaars, and urban slums in India, millions of urchins like Jamal walk across the streets. Seldom do we notice them, and even more rarely do we try to understand them—we never bother to ask about their aspirations. It is in some ways pathetic that we are this unconscious of our avoidance in facing the ills of society. Just because it is too painful to bring up the topic, does that mean it’s okay for us to make a habit of ignoring what goes on around us? The good news is Slumdog comes to us with a solution. It creates a balance of joy and sorrow, of love and cruelty, of faith and doubt, revealing the sophisticated complexity of life and moving us one step closer to seeing our fellow human beings who may be in need and starving. Speaking from the narrative point of view, Slumdog is a successful documentary of real-life India; and from the sentimental perspective, it is a bitter-sweet celebration of the pursuit of love and dreams. People easily identify with the characters and are thus somehow emotionally blackmailed by the director—well, in a good way, I mean. Boyle is trying to make us laugh and shed tears, and he does it brilliantly by taking a bewilderingly intriguing mess of contradictions and conflicts in the society and making it into a surprisingly simple and pure point. Standing at this point in time, we are given the power to reminisce over the past and appreciate the present. Undeniably, the world is having a crisis. In politics we find corruption; in economics we have collapsing banks; in the face of changing information and technology, we are bombarded with knowledge that we have no time to digest. Boyle draws an exquisite picture of a new world dream, tossing away the typical American dream of living happily ever after with…with a house and Land-Rover. He demonstrates the goodness and pureness of one’s soul and how these can strengthen a person in the face of the severest hardship. Finding your feet in the worst situation and holding on to what you believe is the way to a meaningful life. Quite to my surprise, this dream that Boyle talks about is emerging and can be found in almost every aspect of our lives. It illuminates not just the entertainment industry, but the whole human society as Obama’s victory shows. So, are we still in a position to be skeptical and cynical about what we are facing? Or is it time to start believing in the optimism of human nature? A must watch. a
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The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
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