I love Rahman. I’ve loved him ever since I was a little girl and first heard his music in Roja. I am very happy that he won the Oscar. I would have been happier if he had won it for his best work (which Slumdog certainly isn’t) and if it didn’t take a white man’s film to precipitate this recognition. But I am happy.
Slumdog Millionaire is another matter. I can’t pretend to be surprised considering opinion polls all over the Internet predicted its win. But at a certain level, I am astonished. It’s beautifully shot and I loved the soundtrack. Some of the scenes were memorable. But an Oscar? Really?
Most people who’ve had a problem with Slumdog seem to parrot the same boring (and to my mind, ridiculous), pseudo-patriotic argument of ‘how dare anyone show our dirty underbelly’. The one we carefully keep layered up in all seasons. I have no problems with anyone showing anyone else’s underbelly. What I do have a problem with is weak story and bad acting. And then there’s the small matter of realism.
Now, clearly, there’s ‘reality’ and there’s reality. Slumdog specialises in one kind. There are the mutilated beggars, the prostitution, the evil mafia but it’s all so nicely sugarcoated with the big story of Redemption and Hope that in the end, all one walks away with is a happy song and visions of them dancing beside empty trains. The mutilated beggars, the prostitution, the domestic violence, police cruelty — all of it forgotten with a humming tune.
Because the movie cleverly skirts around the other reality. The one that happens to real people as opposed to movie people. The one in which poor boys do not know the answers to all the quiz questions because, well, the lack of education? — it’s a bit of a hindrance. The one in which it takes more to rescue a trafficked girl than two teenage boys with one gun. The one in which the simpering heroine is not saved by the love of a good man and has to either cope with the mess — or find her own way out.
Now, I’d be okay with all this skirting around reality (after all, I’m an avid Bollywood consumer) if the movie wasn’t being talked about as ‘realistic’. The fact that it is being talked about as realistic makes me think that many people are seriously delusional. Or there are two kinds of reality and people like one kind but not the other.
Bring on the slums, dude, but throw in a good ol’ love story, will ya? And make it, you know, hopeful?
Okay, so let’s move on to what’s worse about the movie. What’s worse about the movie is its hollow messaging as Mitu Sengupta at Alternet points out:
The film’s real problem is that it grossly minimizes the capabilities and even the basic humanity of those it so piously claims to speak for. It is no secret that much of “Slumdog” is meant to reflect life in Dharavi, the 213-hectare spread of slums at the heart of Mumbai. The film’s depiction of the legendary Dharavi, which is home to some one million people, is that of a feral wasteland, with little evidence of order, community or compassion. Other than the children, the “slumdogs,” no-one is even remotely well-intentioned. Hustlers, thieves, and petty warlords run amok, and even Jamal’s schoolteacher, a thin, bespectacled man who introduces him to the Three Musketeers, is inexplicably callous. This is a place of evil and decay; of a raw, chaotic tribalism.
Read the full thing.