Day 30: It Is Written

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (2008)

Directed by Danny Boyle

Starring: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan

The next time I start thinking I’ve got a rough life, I’m going to re-watch Slumdog Millionaire.  I haven’t got the first clue of what a “rough life” really is.

But Jamal Malik (Patel) does.  He’s an uneducated assistant in a Mumbai call center who just happens to be playing for the grand prize on India’s version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”  The question on everyone’s mind: How did this nobody from the slums get so far?  As it turns out, every question brings back a painful memory for Jamal, the most painful of which involve his brother Salim (Mittal) and his old flame Latika (Pinto).  But for every heart-breaking moment he relives, his memory for detail also gives him the correct answer.  For the most part, that is.  There are times where he just has to guess.  But he’s doing so well – a little too well – that the host of the show (Kapoor) thinks he may be cheating.

Director Danny Boyle pulls absolutely no punches in this gritty rags-to-riches story.  Life in the Mumbai slums is graphically depicted as the hardest of hard-knock lives.  Jamal and Salim literally go through hell together.  Their mother is killed by anti-Muslim rioters.  They are picked up by an orphanage that teaches them to beg (and blind the best singers among them to bring in more money).  Along the way, the meet an orphan girl named Latika, who Jamal insists tag along with them, but Salim forces him to leave behind.  They fight their way through life begging and working odd jobs, until Salim takes up with a local gangster (Khan), who also has Latika under his watch.  With a combination of documentary-style realism and slick, ultra-modern filmmaking, we get a view of a third-world country that is quickly becoming a major economic force in the world.  And we see it through the eyes of children who come up the hard way during this transition.  

Watching Jamal go through all of this isn’t pretty.  In fact, it’s pretty tough to watch at times.  But there’s something about seeing a character go through the fire come out the other side.  There are films in which the main character comes out bitter and angry.  Other films have them emerge without having learned anything.  But when Jamal comes out of the other side of the inferno, he is sadder but wiser.  Everything he had endured in life pays off.  But there is a certain amount of melancholy in his moment of joy.  Still, this harsh and oftentimes brutal story has one of the most satisfying endings of any film I’ve seen in a long time.  I’m sure you can guess the ending before you get there, but it’s the way the ending plays out that makes it so satisfying.

It really says something when I watch the climax of a film and start to clap.  And I don’t mean in an ironic, smart-alecky sort of way.  I actually applauded.  And I meant it.  That’s how you know you have a powerful film.  If people clap at the outcome of a fictional story, you did good.