Toronto – Indians. They are everywhere. Hell, Vik’s an Indian. I’m talking about the peeps from India, not the Teepee type. Anyway, For years they have been on the butt end of too many convenience store owner (Apu) and taxi driver jokes. However, in recent years they have risen from the invisible glass ceiling laid down by the powers that be – with the rise of all those all-you-can-eat indian buffet restaurants, the success of comics Russell Peters and Aziz Ansari, a dude off Heroes and the moderate success of Bend it Like Beckham – all these little feats have been building up to something. We all know now that is the movie Slumdog Millionaire – a movie based in Mumbai that is now taking center stage at the biggest Hollywood event of the year – The Oscars.
Directed by Danny Boyle, previously known as the guy who did Trainspotting. Actually the first part of the Slumdog pays homage to a famous scene in Trainspotting. As you probably know by now, Slumdog Millionaires tells the story of a lower class kid named ‘Jamal’ who is about to win it all on the show ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’. As he answers each question, we are brought back to flashbacks that tells us how he got to where he is. I don’t want to go under too much detail but the back story is quite intriguing, including gangsters, religious battles, the seedier side of Mumbai and a romantic love interest named Latika played by the impossibly cute Frieda Pinto.
The movie is good in that the acting is solid, the story feels real and the movie just seems to have a big pulsating heart beat behind it. It’s a rags to (maybe) riches story in which the changes in the lives of Jamal are mirrored with the changes that the city of Mumbai undergoes during the same time period. With a great soundtrack and beautiful cinematography, Slumdog Millionaire is pretty much a complete package as far as movies are concerned. The only thing missing was kung fu fighting.
I guess this movie is like a less grimy version of the Brazillian movie ‘City of God’. Both films had two brothers/friends growing up in slums, taking opposite paths in life and both stories took us through time and showed us the transformations of large cities(Rio and Mumbai). So if you enjoyed Slumdog, I would suggest you check out City of God as well.
5/5
