Reg Slumdog

Reg Slumdog, I watched it in DVD (wonderful print) a couple of weeks back. I had read great reviews about the film & was very anxious to view it. The movie was good with riveting performances from the leading actors, fine music, excellent visuals, admirable screenplay etc. but.. I felt that some thing was missing. It was not wholly captivating, for me atleast. The script is totally commercial & lots of scenes were too unrealistic. I would consider it as a great masala movie with some stunning moments. Otherwise, I have seen much better movies which have not won any accolades at all. Even Rahman, I feel, have done better work than this. I don’t want to sound too critical, but this movie didn’t satisfy me entirely. Its a good movie, alright. But does it deserve this kind of hype & acclaim?

There were too many glaring loop-holes. I would mention just one. There is this quiz happening & the contestant has won 50 lakhs already & playing for 1 crore. The quiz master (Anil kapoor) asks the contestant a question & while our hero is thinking about the answer, ..Guess what happens…. there is a honk & Anil announces a break. Is this a live telecast or what? And is it possible that a contestant is given free time & allowed to roam around after a question (which carries a lot of money) is asked? Nonsense. This is just an example & thru’out the film, lot of such liberties has been taken.

And I feel the whole plot of the film stands on loose ground. Why should a guy be interrogated for answering right? just because he hails from a slum.. Do you think that makes sense & is it a possibility? Why should his roots bother a quiz master & even if he feels there is some malpractice involved, doesn’t police persecution look like an extreme step? That too an electric shock?? Its crazy.. Maybe, Mr.Boyle might have thought that in a country like India, anything & every atrocity is possible. I would re-iterate that it is a good film & I liked it, but it is definitely not a great film.

Amitabh Bacchan is being slammed off-late for criticizing Slumdog & the entire film fraternity is tearing him apart for his article about slumdog in his blog. But I would agree with him mostly. Why keep on selling India’s poverty & slums to westerners for the sake of money & awards. We, Indians, are always being type-cast as silly people in foreign movies & the western movie makers seems to be glorifying only our slums & our other deficiencies all the time.

It is a pity that even our own directors, when they want to make movies aiming at international recognition, would touch upon subjects like slum, communal violence, terrorism & the lavish Indian weddings only. Satyajiy ray started it by show-casing India’s poverty & the petty minded rich people / Zamindars. It is a pity that it is still continuing. Why not we OR they make movies on our rich heritage, culture, spirituality, religiousness, togetherness, ethical values, changing lives, booming economy etc? I wonder if there is ever a foreign movie or a serial made, which talks highly of India & its culture.

I remember seeing one part of Indiana Jones, where they portrayed India as a country of snake charmers & elephants. They showed an Indian kingdom which serves monkey brains & other animal parts as delicacies during lunch. I was so agitated (I heard the movie was banned in India during its release, but the damage was done at other countries only). Whichever foreign movie, wanting to be shot in India or wanting to show India, always show us in bad light only. There is a tele-film being telecast in HBO, which makes fun of our BPO set-ups & our accents & the stupidity of Indian workers. There could be very few exceptions here, but they cannot be considered as examples.

Coming back to Slumdog, I know I might sound very cynical, especially because the majority public seems to have been fascinated by the movie. But I cannot help feeling a little humiliated & let-down after watching the film. Maybe, if the westerners have made some movies to show India in good light, I could have possibly loved this flick. But that has not happened till now & India has always been projected as a country that is under-developed / poverty stricken / ridiculously superstitious / dirty / with thick brained people / local underworld dons / corrupt judiciary etc by foreign film makers. This is a very unhealthy phenomenon & has to be stopped even at the cost of few Oscars & Golden globes.



Review – Slum Dog by Arindham Choudhary (IIPM)

The real slumdog in the movie is not the main protagonist but India as a whole… The makers and those celebrating this movie's hard-to-spot brilliance are actually serving up India as the accidental millionaire, which in fact happens to be a slumdog… and like shameless fools we are gloating over its success without realising that it makes a caricature out of India. it's definitely a well cinematographed film… but the film has no soul, especially after little Jamal has jumped off the train and become a teenager… The rest of the film is just a modern version of the West's view of India where slums, slumdogs and Bollywoodian clichés have replaced the elephants and snake charmers.

Slums, open-air lavatories, riots, underworld, prostitution, brothels, child labour, begging, blinding and maiming of kids to make them into 'better beggars', petty peddlers, traffic jams, irresponsible call centre executives… Slumdog…" is just every scrap of dirt picked up from every corner and piled up together to try and hit back at the growing might of India. And the awards almost seem like a sadistic effort to show the world – look we knew that this was India, and these are the slumdogs we are outsourcing our jobs to. It stinks of racial arrogance and it's such a shame now on second thought to see the Indian faces – including that of the undoubted master, AR Rahman - celebrating its success.

When the West wanted Indians to embrace them and their companies to come to India and capture the lucrative markets, suddenly we had all the Indian women, some very beautiful and some not necessarily so, winning all the Miss Universe and Miss Worlds. Today, they are in a crisis and India is looking unstoppable despite its slums and poverty, and they are losing their businesses to us. Isn't it the best time to paint India as the Slumdog Millionaire?? Amitabh Bachchan was spot on when he said that Bollywood has made far better mainstream films.

This edited review has exactly captured my feeling towards this film. I, longingly, look forward to a day when the world cinema would celebrate a film made on contemporary India & its changing lifestyle OR the culture / heritage of India. This would happen only when our own directors start to do so & I can only pray that such a day comes soon.

India has a vast heritage & its history is mind-boggling. Why not we attempt to showcase our traditions & heritage in the real sense? We did try to make films on our celebrated kings, quite a few times actually. But what happened? Jodha Akbar was too commercialized to make an impact with the global audience. Consider Akbar singing & dancing for a duet and people singing a song praising Akbar. Same thing happened with Asoka. SRK & Kareena glamorized their roles & the director mixed his imagination with reality and the end product was awful. We have to look at the regional movies of Iran, Israel, Germany etc to understand how well they portray their country’s legacy & culture without diluting the true spirit.

How will this change? An image make-over has to happen in this industry & Iam looking at various people who can do it. This brings me to a different topic altogether. Who can bring true glory to the Indian cinema? Maybe, I would try to write my next blog based on this.