EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY

Movie Review: Slumdog Millionaire
Rating : 4.25

Who Wants To B A Millionaire? Perhaps most , but not Jamal, and therein lies the irony of Slumdog Millionaire. Jamal is on that quiz show only to locate his lost love, the bountiful Rs 20 million prize as meaningless to him as the inexplicable contempt with which his famous quiz –master host treats him. That is the triumph of the movie, and the human story behind it. The buzz, the fame, the cameras and the money for a boy who rises from desperate crumbs to graduate to being a tea-server in a BPO, hold no relevance. Nothing at all. He looks dazed and nonplussed by all the hullabaloo about his great win.

The fact that the protagonist and his brother are fortunate survivors from a riot-scarred Muslim family underscores the point that pain and agony, struggle and survival are not the prerogative of any one community; it cuts across religious and communal barriers. For those who saw the Mumbai riots of 1992 ( I did) , the truism of the devastation shows. As does the lives of those small faces telling us their hunger pangs as they sell the Mid-Day to us at Churchgate station. Have you ever wondered, where do they finally go to sleep? Who gives them a Crocin tablet when the viral fever rises? And do they ever drink filtered water? Just how does the occasional ten buck donation add up?

The growth of the two brothers into terribly contrasting characters, each rationalized by their circumstance and personality type is pure Salim-Javed ( Salim and Jamal??) and Bollywood masala. But where Danny Boyle scores is his ability to tell a story as is; not too much of overdone dialogues and a moral discourse , just the expression of anguish. Of loss. Of hope.

For Jamal, finding Latika is his only goal, and even as she becomes a gangster’s keep, he knows she must find her freedom. That one of the three musketeers must die is about redemption. And heroism. But it gives the tale a realistic poignant touch. In two hours we travel through the lives of three children, and leave numbed by their horrific experiences.

It took a British film-maker Sam Mendes to make the outstanding American Beauty, a look at suburban life in a modest middle-class home in America, torn apart by sheer vulnerabilities of daily grind and hidden complexities . Nobody grudged him the cinematic success. It won him Oscars, deservingly. Boyle paints an Indian story of spirit and spunk, of survival and strength. The slums are just a background. But they are real. And if you drive down Dharavi even today, the squalor and the stink, the muck and the Mercedes will still be there.

Where the film wins is in it’s universal appeal, which actually comes from the most basic human want; love. If you have found love even if you are in a doghouse , who wants to be a millionaire?