There is an early scene in Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire that sums up the director's approach to the material. As a rampaging Hindu mob tears through a Muslim slum in Mumbai, one of the attackers yells out the following line, which is helpfully rendered in an English subtitle: "They're Muslim! Get them!" Now, one would assume that a club-wielding rioter crazed with religious and nationalistic hatred would 1.) know that the people he was setting on fire were not Hindus like him, and 2.) would need no verbal inducement to "get them," since he's already wielding a club and all. It's a small detail, but it speak to a distinctly remedial air that wafts off of every frame of Slumdog Millionaire. Even though the film is based on a novel by Indian writer Vikas Swarup, it still feels for a lot of the running time like a Travel Channel show about Indian slum life without the aw-shucks Caucasian host.
The film unfolds as a series of flashbacks as Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) a Mumbai slum kid, explains to torture-happy police officers how he came within one correct answer of winning the grand prize on India's version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, answering questions that stump doctors and lawyers. Each question connects, in a conveniently chronological fashion, to experiences in Jamal's life that that gave him the knowledge to answer them. These vignettes tell the story of Jamal's life growing up in on the Mumbai mean streets and his relationship with his brother Salim and Latika, the love of his life. The plot is basically 21st Century Dickens, complete with chance reunions, mysterious benefactors, and even an honest-to-goodness sinister orphanage. Unfortunately, the characters lack Dickens vividness. "Protagonist," "Brother of Protagonist", "Love Interest of Protagonist", and "Game Show Host" are all the characterization the audience can hope to expect. A mechanistic plot and thin characters, coupled with a bevy of montages and the general diffusion created by the flashback structure, ensure that nothing in Slumdog Millionaire can stand out as distinctive or interesting in the blur of action. Boyle reaches for dizzying heights of Romance, but never bothers to make a case that the romance between Jamal and Latika is worth caring about . It certainly doesn't help that the lovers spend the majority of the film apart. It also doesn't help that many of the film's plot contrivances are explained as the intervention of Destiny. Not only does this minimize the suspense regarding the fate of the lovers, it creates a burden of momentousness that the romance can't bear. What is presented as transcendent love comes across as a naked plot engine and a lazy way to explain the stray deaus ex machina. No amount of vividly filmed squalor or bright-eyed urchins can overcome the burden of an unengaging love story, an overly determined plot and a sometimes patronizing tone.
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we have talked about how i sometimes come to like a movie in the days after viewing, as i have time to process it. Good Fellas comes to mind here.
this film has gone the opposite way. i think i was momentarily wooed by Jamal's sort of resigned nature and his status as an average 'slumdog'. in the time since we've seen this, that effect has completely worn off and all that remains is revulsion to the idea of 'destiny' and the cheap exploits that such a concept enables in Boyle's filmmaking, or perhaps the story itself.
i'm bored of it.
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