Pah! Slumdog Millionaire movie won 8 Oscars

Posted on February 24, 2009
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I am really startled by the revelation that Slumdog Millionaire has bagged 8 Oscars and 4 plus Golden Globe awards. Indeed, one cannot ignore the brilliant acting of both newcomers, Dev Patel, the protagonist and his lovely girlfriend Latika aka Freida Pinto. However, if the movie was directed by an Indian, would it have gone there? And if it was not the subject of Mumbai’s underbelly, Asia’s largest slum, Dharavi, would the movie have got an award?

Pah! The media has patently lionized all of those involved in the movie, including the Director Danny Boyle. Taking the worst side of India, for a successful movie is something that must clearly be chided. In this case, am on Amitab
ji’s side. Is it only in India, these underbellies? How about Russia? Not in China? Or may be like Big B said, Paris? Bizarelly, he saw beggars in Paris? :D

While the world, including the awarders found an entertainment seeing the glum potrayal of India’s worst side, how far can it make an impact? Can it bring people, organisations, NGOs to web a better Mumbai? Or is it concluding with some posh award sessions and some ill-fated fame?

Open defacation, stealing, robbery, murder, and what not, the ugly scenes the movie renders to the audience on India. Wasn’t Aaamir Khan’s last year Taare Zaameen Par, fit for a Golden globe award? or may be it was not directed by an Enlish man eh?

I totally agree with this Rediff rating,

I have no problems with the ‘West’ taking up themes of poverty and highlighting the real India. I can completely understand a foreigner being obsessed with the filth and the poverty — I too was stunned by the plight of the homeless in New York — of India. I thought Slumdog is brilliantly shot, and I am willing to forgive Ram dressed as a mix between Shiva and Krishna in a foreign film.

But I do have a problem with a story that pretends to be real when in reality it is just a masala film — the kind we churn out by the dozens in Bollywood.

Yes, Slumdog Millionaire is just superficial fluff, mainly because of its gaping plot holes. It should have been much better researched, and they really should have stuck to one language.

Maybe the makers — and half the world, apparently — believe they have married Bollywood escapism with Western sensibilities, but it is not a match made in cinema heaven. It is more along the lines of 1970s Bollywood tear-jerkers, the kind where the hero transforms from street urchin to gang lord in one running shot and where long-lost brothers are reunited by tattoos.

Trust me, I am really under-whelmed by Hollywood’s annual awards session. The movie won couple of awards, for what? But the best film of 2008? Worthy of all the awards and accolades that Hollywood has to offer? Hardly.

And tell me frankly, whose acting in the movie did you like? Dev Patel? or the Dev Patel aka Jamal (junior)? I loved their acting..and I think they should have really been in LA during the award ceremony. May be they forgot these characters even existed. I rarely found acclamations in their list.

The movie like my beloved reviewers in Rediff, is “contrived, pretentious, absurd, hollow, and inauthentic.”

For foreigners, yes the movie is a startling revelation of another world, something existing/surviving without huge $$, healthy food..attractive lifestyle, this however, to me, as an Indian, isnt new. Such portrayals have been made in the past, in the Indian cinema.

I wished the Oscar reviewers and critics have a third eye to explore the real Indian cinema – - where the treasure lies. Aamir Khan would be a strong contender in future – Watchout!!

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