Monday, March 2, 2009

THE SLUMDOG FIASCO

I finally saw the critically acclaimed winner of 8 Oscar awards Slumdog Millionaire. Firstly its a nice thriller and a good movie but only if you watch it as a movie.

Danny Boyle makes a movie out of a simple age old story where jamal does everything for his lady love and to find her. Come to think of it more than 50% of the Indian movies have the same story line and these bomb at the box office and are just written off by the critics as very stereotypical. Yet he pulls it off which is remarkable.

I did not get the fact as to why did Danny Boyle choose India to make a movie which could had been made anywhere in this world. Well may be cause Q & A the novel was written by an Indian and the story was based on the Indian's or maybe cause he could only picture this movie in India cause he feels that winning a 20 million dollars would be a big thing in India as in any other country everyone is born rich and 20 million dollars is not a big deal at all. It also might be cause he knows this is where he will get all the hype in this world or just may be because he thinks that he can easily without any problems what so ever show India as a poor state and just use this problem of poverty, blow it out of Proportion making a mockery out of the tough situation we face and still get away with it.

And to top it all he exaggerates the last ten minutes of the movie where the whole Mumbai just stops to see the main character win a 20 million dollar and throughout the movie you notice that India has nothing but slums, dirt, frauds and crowded places and then he just rubs salt on our wounds when in a scene Jamal and co. steal the tyres of a car(which by the way is hired by a tourist) and after getting beaten up Jamal tells the American tourist " welcome to the real India" and the American gives him a 100 dollar bill telling him that this is the real America. Such defaming of the name of India is very discomforting and highly disturbing.

Once again before i end this post i would like to say that slumdog millionaire is a good movie but only when you watch it as a movie as soon as you start watching it as an Indian it just leaves you with a bad taste.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

felt the same way when i saw it too...i could'nt agree any less...