After missing so many movies of 2008, and later hosting a small Oscars party for said unseen movies, I decided that I had to see “Slumdog Millionaire.” Uncomfortable in large crowds with irritating candy-unwrapping habits, I thought an 8:20 show last Sunday night on the Upper West Side would basically be my private showing. But numerous Oscars intrigued many, and the house was packed. Thankfully, the crowd was candy-free, and I found a seat in my sweet spot, half-way back in the middle.Rarely has a movie left me so disjointed from my expectation. The media “vibe” of the film as a feel-good, uplifting romance set in Mumbai is not what I saw. And I’m not sure why so many audiences and critics perceive it this way. On the contrary, the violence and suffering in the story—ethnic massacre, child beggar disfigurement, organized criminal murder, forced prostitution, police brutality, and abject poverty—just don't qualify this film as a feel-good movie for me. Thankfully. It’s much more. Director Danny Boyle is terribly clever. He tells a fairy tale, except it exists in reality. Two different formats, melded into one amalgam of unflinching violence and unrestrained joy. His work is both a ravishment for the senses and a reality check for the conscience (aided immensely with a brilliant soundtrack). But why the insistent gushing that it’s a feel-good romance?
"Slumdog" rivets our attention because I feel Western audiences don't know quite what to do with the most difficult parts of it. Sure, we’re quite familiar with the fairy tale format and all its violence. After all, Bambi was orphaned after his mother was shot, Little Red Riding Hood was eaten alive, Snow White was sentenced to death by a jealous queen, Hansel and Gretel were banished in the woods by starving parents and captured by a cannibal witch, Dorothy's friends were viciously dismembered by flying monkeys, and she herself was a potential sacrifice for power, etc. In all, good prevails in some way or another. But the violence of Oz is quite another thing than the savagery in Mumbai shanties, particularly with real children.
We can’t quite imagine where Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail lives in real life. He’s the actor who played the youngest Salim. His home was a tiny, crowded hut of tarpaulin walls and blankets in the Behrampada shanty area of Mumbai. Sadly, he’s worse off now than during filming, as the local community council deemed his family’s hut illegal and razed it. Fortunately, Boyle and the film’s production company are working to move his family and the family of Rubina Ali, who plays the young Letika, to new flats.
The two actors’ good fortune notwithstanding, the story takes place in a world way beyond our direct experience, so it exists somewhat abstractly for most, I suppose. Until Boyle forces us to confront it, run through it, hide in it, and suffer in it. And in that confrontation, we find ourselves in shadowy knowledge of our own personal resources, uncertain. There's a tension in this knowing of our personal power, but yet not fully knowing its extent. So we latch onto that which we can comfortably observe in the story: HOPE. For the thoughtful audience, "Slumdog" asks, "What of my own hope? Would I transcend despair? Maintain my values? Surrender?" Difficult stuff. But youthful, reckless, romantic hope, which underlies the tale of the film, is easier. So we celebrate that, partly goaded with the Bollywood-style production number that plays over the credits. And we call it a "feel-good" experience. It's safe, no?
One of the most shocking moments, and most exemplary, of Boyle’s narrative style is the jump cut from Jamal standing in the shiny, tinsel rain of victory in a game show studio to his brother Salim simultaneously standing in a violent, thug rain of bullets in a bathtub. Boyle both inflates our balloon and pops it at the same time. Yet he remains committed to an affirmation: perhaps despite ourselves, we must fill the balloon, or at least try, regardless of the conditions we live in. It was nearly overwhelming, at least for me, and one of the best pieces of film making I've seen in a long while.
