Slumdog Millionaire – my 2 cents

This was not an intended review initially, but I am constantly amazed by the number of people who liked this movie so I took it as my personal duty to crusade against this particular film for the greater good of an already crumbling society. My vicious ramblings are even more justified by the fact that nobody seems to be willing to tell me what they liked about this movie. If they won’t speak, then I shall. So go on, take out your “bricks, bats, axes, knives” Gangs of New York style and argue all you want – you’ll just be wrong.

Now it is probably not good practice for me to challenge the critical consensus before I am at least fully hatched myself, but sometimes even the nicest of guys, and I guarantee you I am about as nice a guy as you’ll ever meet, feels the urge to step forward. It is said that a critic is primarily guided by a sort of destructive impulse to all that is not to his godly taste, but I find myself strangely affiliated to the light side of the force on this one. I’d far rather write exaltations about my favourite topics than thrash those that displease me. This might be in part because I’ve had some experience with making both games and movies, if only on a very small and insignificant scale. Nonetheless, it made me realize that even the most noble and intelligent of intentions can sometimes in the mysterious process of implementing them into the final product, become entirely invisible, as if they were never there to begin with. Many movies and games perhaps start with true passion and a desire for greatness, and if they fail, then perhaps we shouldn’t blame them too hard for trying. But ignoring less fortunate works of art in favour of masterpieces is one thing, and one that I would even endorse as a form of constructive criticism in the form of absent criticism. But when the entire happy clan of critics swing their pens, frantically lauding a trite and uninspired piece of work, I feel confused. More, I feel as Seinfeld once stated “speechless… without speech”. And from this speechless state, ironically, my fingers start to uncontrollably type. Why, you might ask? Because if nothing else, I truly believe that the only saving attribute of the critic is his ability to forward the evolution of art, to shape its path in a desirable direction. If he must step over bodies, break families up and start wars to do it, then so be it. It’s not his image as a paragon of righteousness that is important but his deeds as one. So what then should I think when all these illuminated minds start writing blank pages about the greatness of the latest soap opera to be seen on the big screens? I might be young, I might be inexperienced, but well… I humbly disagree!

And this my dear friends, is the case with Slumdog Millionaire. Now to make it clear from the start, I didn’t think it a bad movie, it’s just that I didn’t think it a good one either. I didn’t have too much to think about actually, the movie doesn’t try to inspire such boring urges in us anyway. To make it short – there’s some expressionistic camera that tilts, slants and skips frames form time to time. There are some interesting colours in the slums seen throughout the movie. There’s even some nice alternative music in the soundtrack. There’s some flow and feel to it, but when you boil it down to the essence it’s mostly fireworks. A movie needs to be seen as a whole and not just as a vessel, I constantly remind myself as the only palpable means to distinguish personal tastes from critical aspirations. But even the vessel is slightly cracked and what’s worse is that there’s mostly nothing leaking from the inside. To explain myself, consider the riot in the city, where Jamal’s mother is killed. Some of the editing, of the framing, is dubious at best. If it’s supposed to inspire fear in us then can somebody tone down those power-puff colours, and if sympathy is what they’re looking for then surely they could have found another alternative to the way it’s filmed. Sadly, as it stands, that scene is more ludicrous through its clumsiness than anything else. People fall down like scripted puppets at a chorepgrapher’s signal and the mother keeps shouting into the camera with an unconvincing expression. Actors really don’t seem to be trying that hard in this movie, or worse they’re allowed to be lazy. Bogdan signalled it first to me that Latika isn’t even running after the train, but sauntering, when trying to escape the big bad beasts chasing her. Returning back to the riot, the aforementioned expressionistic camera makes the whole act even worse, as does the repetition of her falling down. There’s something about expanding actual time through screen time when done properly, but this isn’t the movie to come for if film theory is what you’re interested in. And is coupling it with the distorted sound perception supposed to make us feel more like we’re in Jamal’s shoes? What’s the point? We see his terrified face, but terrified at what – the bad ballet choreography? And to overkill it all, we even get the motion blur effect caused by insisting on key frames. But if you want to plasticize the video, to burn it into images, then make sure the images you’re displaying are representative, detailed and evocative of an appropriate feel. Here however, techniques seem randomly mixed for motives beyond my comprehension. Look, Saving Private Ryan knows how to create horror on a battlefield and use all the tricks in the book to this effect, it even added a few. Slumdog feels under budget, but that’s not what I’m criticizing here. There are alternatives to get the job done properly even if you are working with a slum-like budget! I constantly felt while watching the movie that if they brought Fernando Meirelles of the beautiful Citade de Deus (City of God) in on the production they might actually have had something good, something belieavable, but more importantly something entertaining. Yet to mitigate my writings a bit, rest assured, that not all is bad and most scenes actually do work quite effectively.

The story isn’t as lucky though as the execution. Let’s consider the disparities in story logic. The kid jumps in the latrine when all he needs to do is climb a 2 meter tall wooden wall, with carefully positioned planks to serve as stairs. This wouldn’t be an issue if Richie Rich was the one in the little boy's room, but it’s a kid from the slums! He jumps over taller walls with no recesses in them for leverage throughout most of the movie! Of course, if he was to have climbed up, that wouldn’t have served the plot… we wouldn’t get to see him all dirty with the autograph in hand, filmed at a low angle… we wouldn’t go “awwww… how cute”. Again, my problem is not with the metaphorical aspect of the film, with the fairy tale thing, but rather with the fact that this itself is not justified! And that’s when one can with assurance say a movie is broken. When there is no justification for randomly placed elements! Film can cheat conventions, expectations and pretty much everything else – but if there is not some higher degree of formal logic linking whatever new theory it proposes, the intelligent viewer is left unimpressed. Some people fill in the gaps by themselves I suppose, or are more easily apt at overlooking such blemishes based on personal tastes, but that isn’t art they’re enjoying. Art is unalterable after the final form given by its artist. It is reinterpretable, but not re-constructable. And the thing is, if this is a fairy tale, then where’s the morale? One of the only critics that seem to have somehow survived the alluring blinding effect of the movie was Anthony Lane of The New Yorker. (I actually recommend you see his article for a more moderated review. The views I forward here are a bit extremist and blurring over the better aspects of the production.) He writes: “And even the pen of Dickens might have trembled above the page before committing to posterity an exchange like this: Come away with me. / And live on what? / Love.” Yeah… and the sad part is they’re serious while they say it, there’s no subtle giggle. But anyway, returning to the whole fairy tale discussion, let’s assume that this is the presumable morality forwarded by the movie. It logically ensues that Jamal won’t win the million dollars but in the process prove to everyone that you can live just with love. Yet it would seem the movie’s morale is a bit more modern in thought – kids, win a million dollars and then live your love off it. And while you’re at it hold a Bollywood dance party in the local train station. Hey, I suppose it’s a pragmatical message (?) but I thought we were in a fairy tale. I’m confused again about the whole functional system this movie has… And here’s another example of bad continuity – the young brothers jump off a train and we see them tumble through dust. When they get up they’re much older and in front of the Taj Mahal. Now what we are left to understand is that either these kids activated an Indian time bubble of sorts and kept tumbling for years on end, or they just kept being throw off trains over and over and over again until they grew up. Either way, it’s not a very intelligent transitional device, it’s just confusing.

So to wrap up, it’s pretty flashy and fast paced. It’s a crowd pleaser and I suppose it pleased, but how does that justify the critical society trying to encourage film makers into dumbing down stories for the sake of looks? I sort of liked the movie, but it wasn’t memorable. Now it won an Academy Award against more serious contenders like Doubt, even In Bruges, so people consider it a paradigm of movie making. That’s where the problem is. Bogdan likes Harry Potter, I liked Naruto – I don’t go around throwing it in people’s faces as the new Dostoyevsky (I think he does though, so beware lest he corrupt you). And to demonstrate that I have nothing against crowd pleasers: take as comparison the review for Suspect X I posted a few days ago. That was a crowd pleaser too, but it’s one that tries to lift the crowds onto higher planes. If people want the extra information or not is up to them, but the movie still presents it for those hungry for more. Slumdog Millionaire on the other hand just gives you the lollypop and makes you suck on it.

Rating: 3/5