It's just a movie Goddamnit!!!

While writing my review on Slumdog Millionaire, I read a few articles on the movie and its depiction of life in Mumbai and the skewed views on the movie and the articles by the Western and Indian audience.

I stumbled across an article that appeared in the Daily Mail titled “The real Slumdog Millionaires: Behind the cinema fantasy, mafia gangs are deliberately crippling children for profit” by Andrew Malone.( Read ). The article is well written and does in fact show the true plight of the poor and homeless children who are mutilated and forced to beg and young girls who are forced into prostitution. The thing that bothers me most is that the article has rubbed some people the wrong way. Quite a few of the westerners seem to be making a sweeping generalization of what Mumbai and India really is, and that is ridiculous. I wonder how they would react when Asians and West Indians would deem all Whites as racists after watching “Made In England” or the rest of the world concluding that all the African-American and Hispanic people in the U.S were criminals after playing a game of Grand Theft Auto. There have been movies made in the west about neo-nazi groups(American History X) and child pornography (8mm) and no one drew any generalization about what was depicted in those movies(and the countless other such movies). So why such fuss over this movie( Slumdog Millionaire)? The thing that people (especially those who are ignorant about India) have to understand is that “beggar-mafia” is a very serious social issue that plagues India just like child pornography, drug abuse, and violence among various ethnic groups are crippling their own countries. Dharavi in Mumbai is no different from South Bronx in New York. While westerners talk about the growing inequality between rich and poor in India, they must also look at the economic disparity that exists in their own countries, especially in our current times of economic slowdown that has affected the West more than India.

The article I now wish to discuss is the one that appeared on Amitabh Bachchan’s blog.( Read ). He wrote , "If SM projects India as Third World dirty under belly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky under belly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations." Bachchan also states, "It's just that the SM idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a Westerner, gets creative Globe recognition. The other would perhaps not."
Further Bachchan recalled that the "commercial escapist world of Indian cinema" has vociferously battled for years, on the attention paid and adulation given to legendary Satyajit Ray at all prestigious film festivals of the West and not a word of appreciation for the entertaining mass-oriented box office blockbusters that were being churned out from Mumbai. "The argument: Ray portrayed reality. The other escapism, fantasy and incredulous posturing. Unimpressive for Cannes, Berlin and Venice. But look at how rapidly all that is changing," he said.( Read)


In regards to the first statement that Mr. Bachchan made, with the operative word being “If”, I have a similar opinion and have explicitly stated it in my previous paragraph. As for whether the movie does infact do that? My answer is an emphatic “NO”.

The plot of Slumdog Millionaire as pointed by Bachchan and others is indeed no different from the typical Hindi movies of the yore. Some of the movies made during that time were actually good. But the needless naach-gaana, dishum-dishum, and the rona-dhona scenes would be difficult for the movie goers in the west to relate to. I myself find these (especially the songs) a deviation from the main plot. I’m pretty sure that if Slumdog Millionaire wouldn’t have fared so well in the West if it had 6 -7 songs and Jamal and Latika running around trees with a dozen boys and girls wearing matching dresses dancing behind them.(This does happen in the movie, but thankfully it is just one song and that too at the end with the rolling credits). Having said that, most Indians consider these(the songs and maudlin scenes) to be an integral part of a movie, which probably explains why Slumdog Millionaire(Crorepati) has been a box office dud back home.

Most of Amitabh’s recent movies: Kaante, Nishabd, Ek Ajnabee, Aitbaar, Bunty Aur Babli to name a few are Hollywood rip offs (Reservoir Dogs, Lolita, Man On Fire, Fear, Bonnie and Clyde respectively). In fact the biggest movie in Bollywood history, Sholay, is heavily drawn from Hollywood western movies(which in turn have been heavily borrowed from Kurosawa’s work). So my question to Mr. Bachchan is,” Why would the audience in the west want to a typical Bollywood masala film which has been ripped off from one of their own movies?” The Hollywood directors/producers remake movies Asian movies too, but they don’t plagiarize it like most Bollywood producers and directors. They obtain legal rights to remake a movie.

I agree that the Mumbai underground has been captured effectively and more deeply in films like Satya, Salaam Bombay, Company and Dharavi, as compared to SM. I’ve already mentioned in my review of SM that there are a few loopholes in the plot, but to discredit SM just because it has been made by a westerner, and saying that ‘Danny Boyle has picked up and glorified every stereotype about India, sensationalized it and packaged it in a film’(as written on BigB blog) is a bit over the top. For those who have and haven’t seen the movie, don’t try reading too much into it. I personally thought it just about above average.

Aamir Khan stated in an interview with NDTV that he doesn't "see ‘Slumdog…’ as an Indian film. I think it is a film about India like Gandhi (that) was made by Sir Richard Attenborough. Similarly, ‘Slumdog…’ is about India but it is not an Indian film. Well, then how does one decide whether or not a movie is Indian? What does or does not make a movie Indian? More on that in my next post.