Impressions

After reading a lot of crap about Slumdog Millionaire, I didn't know if I wanted to see the movie. I was in Boise yesterday visiting a friend, and we went and saw it together, beers in tow, and I am glad that I changed my mind.

First and foremost Slumdog Millionaire is a love story, but I guess that escaped more than a few people's field of vision. It is also yet another fight between good and evil, from a different perspective, from that of children from the slums, humans that other humans supposedly better than them call dogs.

Jamal is judged by some to be a cheat because as a "chaiwala", as someone who comes from where he does, he could not possibly know the answers to the questions asked, be they about bhajans, or dead presidents or one of the three musketeers. What we see throughout the movie is that "education" or in the case of "Millionaire," "trivia", is not just the purview of those who are better off, and can afford good schools. Such knowledge or trivia is also learned in the school of hard knocks.

Jamal sees Latika for who she is as a person, his love for her has survived through everything, and hers for him. Everyone else views her as a commodity, as "maal" which is worth money to someone, including Jamal's brother Salim. Salim is an interesting character as he is someone who struggles mightily within himself, but he can never be like his kid brother. For him, it is survival at any cost, and while Jamal triumphs over those who think he is a cheat and a thief, Salim also triumphs in his own way. He puts an end to what has haunted him all his life.

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More than a few were offended by the fact that Jamal was willing to go to any lengths to get an autograph from Amitabh Bachchan including jumping into a pile of excrement and being covered with it. Nasty as it is, to me it is symbolic of the lengths, the maniacal, fanatical behavior of some when it comes to movie stars and other celebrities. Would anyone have done what Jamal did to get to Amitabh Bachchan? One never knows. ana would have kept watch on Nadeem's wife's hospital room, to approach him and ask for his autograph, and shake his hand if she hadn't been in fear of being caught and slapped around. Jamal wasn't necessarily fearless. Perhaps desperately driven.

There is violence, and not just the physical kind, but violence that stays with you and it is not an easy film to watch by any means. But out of all the violence, hope still springs. Jamal clings to hope and it saves him. Love saves him. And Latika. I exited the theatre with that thought. And it wasn't exactly the ending as Yash Chopra used to have his thoughts scribbled at the end of some of his movies, it wasn't that kind of schmaltzy love conquers all thought. . . . Jamal chooses the same path A.R Rahman said he chose in his Oscar acceptance speech.

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I sometimes have not been all that fond of what Dustin Hoffman describes as breaking a novel, or book to adapt a screenplay, and I have not read Q & A, but I do know that "based on the novel whatever" does not mean it literally follows the book. Perhaps "inspired by. . ." would have been more appropriate. I hope that someone, perhaps even an Indian, does make another movie titled Q & A, and not gloss over the conditions the characters live in. That also would be an interesting story.