Slumdog Millionaire

Rating: 40%

(http://www.aceshowbiz.com)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

2008

Countries:

Predominant Genre:

Drama

Directors:

Outstanding Performances:

Premiss:

Teenager, growing-up in the slums, becomes a quiz contestant to become a millionaire.

Themes:

Alienation

Destiny

Emotional repression

Friendship

Grieving

Identity

Loneliness

Loyalty

Narcissism

Personal change

Political Correctness

Redemption

Self-expression

Social class

Snobbery

Solipsism

Stereotyping

White culture

White guilt

White supremacy

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

Unknown

Review Format:

DVD

Cheap Holiday in Other People’s Misery

Summary: Materialistic, emotionally-retarded and guilt-ridden example of poverty porn pretending to be otherwise .

Bizarrely-improbable plotting that expects us to believe that every question asked by a quiz-show host would exactly and directly relate to the life of a contestant, such that he would have no problem answering any of them - despite his lack of formal education. (Like sitting an exam and finding that all the questions are just and only the ones revised-for in the past year!) This fatuity is not compensated-for by appealing to an audience’s sense of emotional reality overriding what they know is logically implausible.

The plot is contrived for no emotional reason since issues of Third-World poverty are skated-over rather than dissected. The puppy-love story never rises above the merely cute, since the actors cannot convincingly-create a romance that transcends time and place as required by the screenplay due to its feebleness.

(http://returnaddress.tv)

And it is the thinness of the script’s characterization – not the acting – which creates poor empathy for these characters. The filmmakers were clearly hoping the kids’ adorableness would overcome this problem. However, one of the themes of the film is that the feelings of the characters for one another are more important than 20,000,000 Rupees. Yet this requires characterization-in-depth; otherwise, how are we to assess the relative importance of money to them if we do not really know their minds? (The Deleted Scenes reveal the esthetic compromises made to keep the film’s running-time down – yet the characterization would have been deeper had they been left in.)

The style is very much borrowed from Bollywood - to good effect – but They Shoot Horses Don’t They? this ain’t. Undemanding fun, but it is very hard to see what – specifically – garnered this condescending troll through the misery of others eight Academy Awards, unless it was precisely that very trolling; that is, White Guilt.

The movie never really rises above the patronizing level of the American tourists giving poor street-kids a Benjamin Franklin (100-Dollar bill) to ease their offended consciences – despite having been robbed by those same, Oliver Twist-like, street-urchins. Clearly, just another Bob Geldof-style slumming in other people’s poverty – much like the director’s earlier Millions. The road to hell is certainly paved with good intentions:

“
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason. ”

T S Eliot, (1888-1965), Anglo-American poet & critic. Thomas, in Murder in the Cathedral, part one.

The poor here do indeed suffer mightily, but the confidence trick being played on the audience is that a quiz show, rather than hard work or talent, can somehow obliterate and make-up-for the hard-won and the deeply-ingrained lessons of childhood poverty. This fatally undermines any realism; leading us into the kind of fantasyland that a less brutally-racist film would evince.

Moreover, the movie cannot decide between Destiny as a force in ones life or Choice; making this a mish-mash of themes that never cohere; a confusion of aims that never hits its target. It does not even come-out cleanly in favor of choosing ones destiny since winning the quiz show (& two Crore Rupees) can simply be a matter of luck, not a matter of Choice or of Destiny.

In the end, Slumdog presents a profoundly-dehumanizing view of the poor. Because there are no internal resources shown, all “solutions” must arrive externally. After a harrowing life in an anarchic wilderness, salvation finally comes in the form of an imported quiz-show; after years of patiently awaiting their destinies of rescue by a foreign hand? A “feel-good” movie for Whites which delivers a patronizing, colonial and ultimately sham statement on social justice.

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See also:

1. Reactions from Indians
2. Controversial issues

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (Esthetics) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.