Filed under: Cinemático
Since Slumdog Millionaire has been talked about so much since it made its way to the Oscars, thought I’d share some thoughts here in light of their spectacular win last Sunday. I hadn’t heard of it even a day before I first went to watch it, but found a very positive review through google when some friends asked if I wanted to go check it out. Well, we eventually couldn’t, becuase it was the day after realease and was all sold out at at our small neighborhood theater where they only show foreign and indie films. By the time I got to watch it about a week later at the big main theater in Boston, everyone was raving about how awesome it is.
I’m not gonna lie: I loved it. So much so, and especially the music, that I came out dancing. It was a bit of a shock, because the movie departs so much from the kind that I like. One of my friends was not too impressed; she complained how unrealistic it was. True, the whole melodrama is pretty fantastical. But then another friend pointed out that it was precisely the remarkably realistic portrayal of Mumbai that made the film so touching. So there we go: the tricky balance of the believable and the mandatory suspension of belief that every literary project must pursue.
But here are the more interesting questions, ones that people have been debating about all over: what to do about a film that has been hailed as representing India to the world, but was actually made by a group of British filmmakers. What about those Indians who were (and some still are) protesting that the film fetishizes on poverty, and paints a picture of India as a third-world developing country, without showing the “real,” “modern” Mumbai. (more…)
