The Starz Denver Film Festival chose wisely in selecting “Slumdog Millionaire” to be its “Big Night” feature.
The film could be the one which catapults director Danny Boyle into the Oscar circle … at last.
He should have been here before, what with modern classics like “Trainspotting,” “Millions” and “28 Days Later” on his resume.
Still, the Oscar Gods are fickle, and sometimes it takes a while before they anoint a great director as worthy of those gleaming statuettes.
“Millionaire” may not be Boyle’s best film, but it captures the cultural zeitgeist in ways Academy voters will be hard pressed to ignore.
The film follows an Indian orphan named Jamal (played by various actors, but Dev Patel is the adult Jamal) who ends up on the Hindi version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”
Jamal is in the hot seat in more ways than one. The show’s producers suspect he’s cheating en route to the game’s big prize, and he hopes his national exposure can reunite him with a long lost friend.
“Millionaire” is told in fragmented style, with the game show sequences serving as the connecting plot to a series of flashbacks. Young Jamal endured horrible poverty and the cruel separation from first his mother and then his brother and best girl friend.
How he survives – and becomes a symbol for his changing nation – is what makes “Slumdog” such a unique film experience.
It isn’t an imperfect one, despite the recent raves. The central love story is undernourished, to say the least, and the manipulative nature of the plot welcomes criticism from the cynic in all of us.
But Boyle is a master visualist, one with such a firm grip on his audience that we’ll follow him down any cinematic alley. He’s also unparalleled when it comes to bringing out the best from youthful performers (see “Millions” for all the proof you’ll ever need).
“Slumdog Millionaire” reflects the new Indian economy, a full-throttled engine which puts pressure on existing social systems. Jamal’s improbable run at the game show’s jackpot throws that tension into stark relief.
American audiences might not be familiar with the Bollywood film style, but “SM” offers the perfect introduction. The film’s musical number, which precedes the closing credits, is the most buoyant, beautiful five minutes of film you’ll see all year.
And you might just hear those musical strains again come Oscar night.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
My wife and I saw Slumdog Millionaire on Saturday night at the Laemmle’s Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. The 7 p.m. show was sold out, so we bought tickets for the 8 p.m. show and as we sat down (early), the theater filled up again — undoubtedly sold out again.
I find it amazing that the film has only made $8 million or so as of last weekend. I expect the box office to really pick up as the film warrants wider release due to the accolades and buzz it has received.
By the way, we really enjoyed the film. We’re very curious, though, as to why it is rated R. Yes, there is some violence — a man set aflame and running about, a man shot at point-blank range (but the camera cuts away and you see nothing graphic), and a beating or two — but having watched Iron Man again on DVD last night, that movie was just as violent (if not more) and garnered a PG-13 rating. Iron Man sets various things and people on fire in the cave escape scene, dozens of people are gunned down, etc. In Slumdog, there is virtually no profanity and zero nudity and only implied sex.
Do you have a theory, Christian, as to why this fine film got an “R” rating? I’m puzzled.
It wouldn’t be the first time the Ratings Board made an error. I saw SM a few weeks back so my memory is a bit fuzzy. Here’s what the Ratings Board says –
Rated R for some violence, disturbing images and language
I’m thinking the intensity of some of the scenes in question earned the R ratings, while Iron Man’s violence is more flip and comic book like.
True enough. But “disturbing,” in my mind, is hardly “R” worthy. In fact, more realistic depictions of violence — again, not graphic and cartoonish violence, but violent acts in the context of real life — is probably less damaging and more instructive to teenage viewers than most of the “blowed up” scenes we see in the average action film.
Watch Iron Man dealing out righteous justice by making countless things explode does more to convey the notion that violence is OK, or at least not “real,” than what one sees in Slumdog Millionaire. It desensitizes kids to the effect of violent acts with weapons.
And, come to think of it, the ambush scene at the start of Irom Man is just about as realistic and “disturbing” as anything in Slumdog.
I’ll never understand the guidelines of the MPAA, and might want to check out the documentary film against the MPAA that was in the previews before Slumdog. Prescient preview, as it turned out.