| The story revolves around Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who is about to experience the biggest day of his life. With the whole nation watching, he is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India’s “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” But when the show breaks for the night, police arrest him on suspicion of cheating; how could a street kid know so much? Desperate to prove his innocence, Jamal tells the story of his life in the slum where he and his brother grew up, of their adventures together on the road, of vicious encounters with local gangs, and of Latika, the girl he loved and lost. Each chapter of his story reveals the key to the answer to one of the game show’s questions. Each chapter of Jamal’s increasingly layered story reveals where he learned the answers to the show’s seemingly impossible quizzes. Indian elation at the Golden Globe Awards and possible success at the Academy awards ceremony scheduled next month are misplaced. Danny Boyle’s Indian co-director, Loveleen Tandan, may be considered bold, but the duo has exposed the real ugliness of India. The extremist Hindu mobs lynching ghetto Muslims, the underworld kidnapping the children orphaned as a result of their organized pogroms, incapacitating the Muslim boys, teaching them Hindu Bhajans and turning them into beggars while selling the Muslim girls to brothels depicts the sordid and gory side of India, which its regular Bollywood producers hide under the sheen and glamour of “shining India”. |
Pakistan Observer casts an envious eye on our jubilation, calls this film- "Slumdog Millionaire- India's shame!", and berates us with numbers and names.
Is this film about hope, or love, or luck, or did Boyle have a hidden agenda in making this film, with a script that is so amenable to the propaganda of such secular activists?
Is our joy soon to turn sour?
"It will take more than movies like “Slumdog Millionaire” to expose India’s shame and bigotry", writes the Pakistan Observer, and I kind of hear a compassionate groan of despair from the brazen and freethinking brothers across our border (it sounds rusty and squeaky, may be my hearing is gone...)
Interesting days ahead, anyway.
I heard from some one that Amitabh is angry at the way India is projected in the movie and he aired his displeasure. It could be true that this movie shows the bad and ugly side of India. It may be exaggerated or just plain truth. Whatever be it, it's an artistic expression. If it is the truth then face it. If it is not then just ignore it.If Pakistan can find some solace from it, Poor souls, they need it.
ReplyDeleteForget what Pakistan says...even they don't trust which word will roll of their slippery tongue next. Their net worth, in my mind at least, is not in what interpretation they attach to anything Indian, but in directing our attention to things we may have missed.
ReplyDeleteHowever, that said, there is a rather frank camera cast on some aspects of India in the film.
Why hide it?...then we become like Pakistan. Better to take reality checks and improve for the better.
Yes, there are some pretty awesome statistics there, if true we will have to hang our heads in shame.
ReplyDeleteBut really, if the story had been otherwise, a Hindu boy in a slum kidnapped by islamists and so on... How would people around the world and here in India have reacted? There is some bias there...
Here in Tamil films, right from the sixties, when the heroine is oppressed, or the hero is dire straits they usually find refuge in a Church, of in the home of a poor Muslim. That is a stereotype here. It is never the other way.