Slumdog Millionaire Your Best Bet This Holiday

Imagine the pressure of playing a game show for a million dollars… Got it? Ok, now add the hopes and dreams of your entire country whose eyes are glued to the nearest TV set watching every move you make; tack on the police who have arrested you under suspicion of cheating; sprinkle on the fact that the woman you have loved since you were 5 has been stolen from you… Oh, did I mention you are 18 and grew up in the Slums of India? How do you think you’d do?

Slumdog Millionarire, Danny Boyle’s latest creation (Sunshine, 28 Days Later, Trainspotting), brings this exact story to the big screen. Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) has one question to go as a contestant on India’s version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire but has been taken into custody to prove he honestly knew the answers. The investigation becomes the frame for detailing Jamal’s brutal, passionate, confusing, and true story growing up as an orphan in India. The police investigator (Irrfan Khan, The Namesake) plays back each trivia question and demands justification for Jamal’s knowledge of each subject. What could have turned into a very boring and predictable story-telling device, Boyle handles very delicately and artistically. Each question’s back story has its own vignette with an individual style, feel, and pace. (Think Paris Je T’aime meets Traffic.) The flashes build to construct a solid history of Jamal’s process from losing his mother at a very young age to possibly becoming one of the wealthiest and most popular men in India. Sounds cheesy, I know, but since Boyle handles each one carefully and with equal attention he never loses the audience. The pace fluctuates, yes, but never stalls.

Slumdog allows the skill of very talented, but lesser-known actors, to do the talking for it (like only a foreign film could; this film could never be made in Hollywood, and is probably better because of it). Children become the stars for the first half of the film and might be the biggest and most pleasant surprise of the piece. Aside from kids looking cute and adorable with everything they do, this film captures an honesty and reality in young characters that we rarely see. Since we believe the characters and their relationships from a young age the transition to their adulthood is a seamless and non distracting one.

The music and soundtrack, edited by Niv Adiri and created by AR Rahman, told its own story, complimented the plot, and masterfully kept the energy alive the entire run (literally and figuratively since much of the first half of the movie involves our young protagonists being chased through the crowded city streets). The energetic and always active shots, as well as Antony Dod Mantle’s dark, rugged, yet honest cinematography (the shot of a man drowning in a bathtub of money comes to mind), make it hard to look away from the sometimes horrific but always beautiful story being told.

Slumdog Millionaire is the story of one man’s literal struggle for survival and quest for love in a cruel world that has given him nothing. The success of this movie comes from the fact that it simply tells the story and tells it well, using all the tools of modern filmmaking. I like to be reminded that good stories and beautiful film work still have a place in our diluted cinema world. And I didn’t even see Regis Philbin once…