Disappointment and Danny Boyle

Film Still:
Little Jamal, the slumdog, relieving himself in an outhouse minutes before he will jump willingly into a pool of shit.



I thought I didn't have enough time to write about what is wrong with Danny Boyle's latest film, Slumdog Millionaire. But a fawning review in New York Magazine compels me. I now think it is my moral duty to point out why I suffered a mini heartbreak after watching it at the MIAAC Film festival this Saturday.

I'm being generous here and wondering if it was so jarring to me because I'm a Bombay native. The linguistic inconsistency was biting: Nine year-old slum kids do not speak English. Boyle mentioned studio pressure during a Q&A after the screening and said that his studio bosses were uncertain even about the first one third in Hindi ( which he had to do because it would have been impossible to train four year-old street kids to mouth English punch lines). The inauthenticity of the language lends an overall aura of artifice to the film. And it highlights every other logical flaw.

I cannot believe this is the director who gave us Trainspotting or the charming but underrated Millions. While they had elements of exaggeration, surrealism or some magic, it's central characters were believable and real. They dressed, spoke and behaved like people in their setting were supposed to. In Slumdog Millionaire, they didn't. The first one-third, with the talented kids, is so well made that it seems like Boyle tired out and settled for a poor pastiche to follow up.

The film works on what seems at first to be an ingenious narrative tool — the protagonist's flashbacks to his childhood as he sits in the contestant's chair for the popular television quiz show Who wants to be a Millionaire? But after a while, in a bid to make connections, the questions and the anecdotes get strained and predictable. The relationship between the central characters in the story, though just three, is strangely underdeveloped. The film has a perfect, saccharine sweet ending. It also winds up with a spoofy Bollywood song ( which would have otherwise been a nice touch but just annoyed me because I was annoyed anyway). I do not have any aversion to Bollywood, but when I go to see a Danny Boyle film I do not expect a poor version of a Bollywood drama.

The casting was terrific— the actor who plays little Jamal is a star in the making, the film had great music by Indian maverick composer A.R Rahman and a track by Sri Lankan-British singer M.I.A ( Paper Planes!). It was also shot beautifully. Though the film shows Bombay in all its glorious grime, the camera does not attempt to patronize. I wish Boyle had used all these elements to spin together a story that is convincing, one in which the characters seem sincere in their emotions and one that builds in its narrative climax. I also wish he hadn't underutilized terrific actors like Irfan Khan ( the cop) and Saurabh Shukla ( the cop's sidekick).

If Slumdog Millionaire wins a 2008 Best Picture Academy Award like New York Magazine threatens it might, I'm either going to have to seriously start making movies or abandon writing about them altogether for an "international" audience.

Update: Slumdog Millionaire gets tagged "bad" on the TIFF 2008 report on the Daily Plastic Blog.

Mainstream media is celebratory: New York Times, WSJ, Salon. The New Yorker makes an exception ( and with that, reinforces my faith and love).

Update 2: Moinky from LA ( who commented below) has qualms about "English" slumdogs. There's visible dissent on the IMDB discussion board, which has been met with passionate retorts. What I do concede to however is that all said, this film elicits strong opinions on either side of the spectrum. And that is commendable for any work of art.