I’m more or less prepared to drink the Kool-Aid on Slumdog Millionaire. It’s a pretty compelling movie, though a very traditional one at heart. It is essentially a love story (boy meets girl, overcomes tremendous obstacles to win girl); what’s different here is the setting of India, and in particular the slums of Mumbai. The portrayal of urban poverty, especially in the first half hour or so, is stunning. Seen through the eyes of seven-year-olds, it is not so much a life of deprivation, but one of frenetic, often exuberant, and inexplicable action. The mother of the brothers Jamal and Salim, is cut down in an anti-Muslim riot while washing clothes (anti-Muslim sentiments are an undercurrent throughout) and they become orphaned street children (no reference is ever made to their father). Along with another little girl, Latika, they take under their wing, the boys soon are sucked into the city’s criminal underworld, a world that Jamal embraces and Salim keeps at arm’s length. So, in addition to its traditional love story, it is Hollywood in the plot line in which one brother turns to evil and the other remains, if not pure, at least on the side of the angels— traditional even to the extent that the evil brother eventually sacrifices himself for the good. (Didn’t Cagney and Bogart do this gig?) By their early teens Jamal has killed one of their gangland oppressors; he takes Latika as his mistress, and rejects his brother. Five years pass, and Salim has found honest work as a tea server and, after futile attempts to relocate Latika, he decides the only way to reconnect is for him to appear on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. That he is able to do so, and that the questions he gets happen to be answerable from his experiences as a “slumdog,” requires viewers to suspend their disbelief, but it’s worth it as the movie ends (who would’ve guessed?), with the lovers’ kissing, reunited at last. The film is really dark and violent, not for the kiddies. Director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) used real slum kids for the roles of the boys at seven, but actors for them at 13 and 18. I’m not fully sold on the actors in the final phase, and the lack of physical resemblance at the various ages is a bit disconcerting. It’s a feel-good movie, except for the poverty and violence, which makes for an odd mix. Stick around for the credits; there’s a fun dance sequence in the train station.
