As the warm tidings of Thanksgiving break wash away, it is easy to get sucked back into storylines of crappy economies, financial crises, and the personal angst and antipathy that go with such foul narratives.
But don’t go there. For this malaise, this ennui, it shall pass. It may be painful and it is definitely psychically confusing, but from such places come real illumination, and we all know that necessity is one of the eternal mothers of invention.
But there is karma, too; namely that the seeds of ‘life experience’ bear perpetual fruits, a truth that should be held as indelible, even if the time, place and specifics of such fruits’ nascence is wholly unpredictable.
With that backdrop, I strongly encourage you to see ‘Slumdog Millionaire,’ a brilliantly constructed, emotionally real fable about an illiterate young man from the slums of Mumbai who goes on the local TV version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” and finds himself sitting on the razor’s edge between transcendence and destruction.
Directed by Danny Boyle, whose surreal, visually arresting style and well-framed narrative you may have seen in movies as diverse as ‘28 Days Later’ (zombies arise when animal research goes awry), ‘The Beach’ (escapism, hedonism and its costs) and 'Trainspotting' (heroin addiction and its lifestyle), Slumdog Millionaire is uncompromising, engaging and powerfully real.
It presents a picture of India that few of us have seen, of poverty, despair, hate, predators and prey, but also of humanity, love and the will to survive. All of this is presented around a creative and well-grounded storyline that neatly juxtaposes Old India with New India.
Syrupy, it is not, and my wife and I were driven to tears more than once, but it is not gloom and total darkness, either. I won’t say more than that, as you should see this film.
Here are a couple of excerpts from excellent reviews by Roger Ebert (of Ebert and Roeper fame) and Rolling Stone magazine:
"Slumdog Millionaire" bridges these two Indias by cutting between a world of poverty and the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." It tells the story of an orphan from the slums of Mumbai who is born into a brutal existence. A petty thief, impostor and survivor, mired in dire poverty, he improvises his way up through the world and remembers everything he has learned. The film uses dazzling cinematography, breathless editing, driving music and headlong momentum to explode with narrative force, stirring in a romance at the same time. For Danny Boyle, it is a personal triumph. He combines the suspense of a game show with the vision and energy of "City of God" and never stops sprinting.