Ayush Mahesh Khedekar as young Jamal.After receiving much exposure at this film awards season, I recently watched the internationally acclaimed film directed by Danny Boyle,
Slumdog Millionaire. At first thought and as per my previous Bollywood film exposure, I had assumed that Slumdog Millionaire would be typical of its predecessors - lots of singing, dancing, eccentric costumes accompanied by storylines that romanticise and celebrate the best of Indian culture and life.
Slumdog Millionaire does share the underlying theme that binds most Western (and Eastern) films of acquiring and earning love, however, the film provides the rare opportunity by allowing a larger audience outside of India to live and see life through the eyes of three young children who live in extreme poverty and experience painful experiences that neither of us would want to see happen to our own children. I believe this to be a more honest and realist portrayal of India - a well-directed film I would definately prefer watching than a perfectly presented, over-romanticised film about India.
Although, certain audiences have viewed this film to be a negative portrayal of a country also richly blessed with wealth and beauty, I know India (just as any other major developed city or country) too has its 'ugly' side. I don't believe I'm as close-minded, poorly educated and arrogant as a xenophobe who has an ill constructed perception about a country overwhelmingly rich in history and culture.
Told and seen through the eyes of the protoganist Jamal (Dev Patel), the movie's horrifiying detail is eased by the innocent, childish humour relayed throughout the script by the other two main characters - Jamal's brother, Salim (Madhur Pintal) and Jamal's love interest, Latika (Freida Pinto).
Among the criticisms of the film's portrayal of India ("a wasteland filled with horror stories of exploitation and degradation" as one critic put it), I believe it is important to remember the intention of the scriptwriter, Simon Beaufoy which was to convey "...the sense of this huge amount of fun, laughter, chat, and sense of community that is in these slums." I strongly believe that the storyline is highly motivational and uplifting.
As a member of the audience, I did not stigmatise nor limit myself to having a constricted and incorrect perception of India as being "one big slum." I guess if the story-line was different and proved to be a lot more unfortunate, then the grounds of arguing that the film was heavily biased could be justified. For example, what if the script had been different and limited the life of "The Three Musketeers" to a life only confined to the slum and their deaths were the result of a common-slum disease? Then I guess, this would be a very negative portrayal of India. This is not the fact in the movie where the lives of the three main characters is not limited to a life of slum-like dwelling and poverty-ridden experiences - we see India's highly visited tourist site, the Taj Mahal, appreciate and breathe the landscape of the interior of India as the two brothers, Jamal and Salim travel on a train, immerse ourselves in Hindi as the characters conversate etc. Unlike the practise of other Bollywood films I have watched that have preceeded Slumdog Millionaire, Slumdog Millionaire accounts and briefly draws the attention of a few segments of India (from the elite through to its slum-dwelling residents). Audiences see the real India- a country that is becoming one of the most competitive economies in the world - rich in its culture and heritage, yet still trying to overcome and solve its own social and development issues. To attest to this dilemma, Slumdog Millionaire has already been hailed by Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern as, "the film world's first globalised masterpiece." This a story, that is not only limited to the experiences of Third World Countries, but issues such as crime and poverty portrayed in this movie, also occur even in great major developed nations such as the United States of America. There is no need for a group of people to feel attacked or mispresented as poverty is a global issue and in this circumstance, I believe has not been used to humiliate or ridicule the circumstances of a single country.
This movie has not turned me away from visiting India one day and neither has it changed my perception of this Nation. Before my birth, my mother lived and travelled around India for two months and her admiration and love for the culture, cuisine and people further arouse curiosity in me til this day.
