Easily the best of the five films nominated for Best Picture this year (which isn’t saying a whole lot), “Slumdog Millionaire” can be summed up with the term, “highly original.” The story, how it unfolds, the cinematography, editing, score, end credits (of all things) and most of all, and most impressively, the tone. “Slumdog” is a living breathing thing that somehow shifts — frequently on a moment’s notice — from harrowing to exhilarating to touching. With a dip into Bollywood territory, director Danny Boyle, who jumps from genre to genre more successfully than any filmmaker since Billy Wilder, takes you into a completely foreign world for a wild, emotional ride that only fails in its ability to linger with you any longer than the walk to your car.
Our slumdog millionaire is Jamal Malik (Dev Patel). A slumdog because for all of his twenty-odd years he has hustled and barely held on in the worst slums of India; a millionaire because he’s captured his nation’s attention impossibly making it to all but the last round of the Hindi version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”
No one can believe this uneducated nobody has made it so far up the game show money tree, and this is why when we meet Jamal he’s being tortured by the local police for not fessing up to his cheating. Only after it becomes obvious he won’t talk is he allowed to explain that his success is the result of how each of the show’s questions relate to his life story. And this is the device used to take us through Jamal’s childhood and the tragic, exciting, and bittersweet steps over the last ten years that led to his game show triumph.
What keeps the story compelling are a number of rich themes, beautifully crafted, chief among them the odd but enduring love-hate relationship between brothers and the curse of the tender truth that you can’t feel first love a second time. Boyle hits every storytelling cylinder, exploring, as fully as his themes, an entirely different and foreign world rich with beauty even in its harshest ghettos.
Mixing color, sound, music, and camera movement, Boyle wields a vibrant kaleidoscope of movement and energy that saturates the senses but never loses track of character or story. In this respect alone, the film’s a stunning achievement. But nothing means anything without story and “Full Monty” (1997) scribe Simon Beaufoy, working from Vikas Swarup‘s novel, meticulously weaves the telling in and out of various time frames without the audience ever losing track or creating any dip in narrative propulsion.
The performances are across the board outstanding. The three main players, which include Jamal, his older brother Salim, and the tragic, ethereal beauty Latika, are each portrayed by three different actors ranging in age from young children to young adult. Never once for a single moment do you catch any of them — or anyone, for that matter — acting. The performances are completely believable and natural. With the emotional extremes all the players are forced to work within this is quite a feat but necessary if the spell’s to remain unbroken.
More impressive than the performances is the intricate craftsmanship that went into creating these characters. Time and again they do things that surprise, but never once do the surprises betray who we know the characters to be. This is especially true for Salim, Jamal’s older brother, whose personal code only makes sense to him. Almost immediately we realize this is someone whose consistency is his inconsistency and time and again this makes for tense situations where the outcome’s impossible to guess.
But for all the perfectly executed visual, sound and performance elements, make no mistake; “Slumdog” is a director’s piece. Pure vision executed masterfully by a man who knows what he wants and how to ask for it. Boyle’s a director impossible to pin down to a specific genre and this time he’s gone off and created one of his own.
If there’s anything Boyle’s done before that “Slumdog” most resembles it would be “Trainspotting” (1996) but only in the realm of a relentless, energetic drive to go forward (and a disgusting but still amusing toilet scene). But if one didn’t know they would never believe that Boyle is the same director who crafted “Shallow Grave” (1995), “28 Days Later” (2002), “Millions” (2004) and “Sunshine” (2007). As a matter of fact, every one of those titles would be difficult to pin to the same man — and if there’s a finer compliment to pay a director, I haven’t heard it.
Like a great rollercoaster ride, “Slumdog Millionaire” is breathlessly recommended, but like a great rollercoaster ride the experience doesn’t linger. “Slumdog” impresses but doesn’t resonate like a great film should. Glad I saw it, but have no interest in seeing it again. Make of that what you will.
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