Director: David Boyle, Loveleen Tandan

Cast: Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor, Frieda Pinto, Rubina Ali, Ayush Mahesh Khedekar, Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail

Rating:

A sum of eight out of ten Academy Awards, seven out of eleven BAFTA Awards, five out of six Critics Choice Awards, and all four of the Golden Globes Awards for which the movie was nominated.

As the 81st Academy Awards nomination list announcement date was approaching, expectations were rising for which is going to be the “Oscar movie” this year: Australia, The Dark Knight, The Wrestler, or maybe a movie that all can’t wait to watch, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Then came up the list including an Indian-British movie that 2nd topped the list with ten nominations…

The captivating title, Slumdog Millionaire, started spreading around; a movie about Indian slums and the famous show “who wants to be a millionaire?”, but the big question remained was: Is it really a typical Indian movie? About a love triangle dilemma, brutal family murders and paybacks, and irrelevant joyful dance scenes that usually appear out of nowhere in hilariously tragic epics where all actors turn out to be professional dancers and share the same soprano voice level.

Beating up lots of mega hits and timeless masterpieces, the movie released a silent suspicion to the reasons and attributes involved in aiding it to stand out… still talking from an observer perspective who still haven’t watched the movie but carefully tracked what led this laid back motion picture to a granted success.

Joyful little slums, unknown actors, and a debatably talented British director who never managed to leave a trademark in his movies. This acclaimed movie, on the other hand, managed to sweep up most of the awards where in one of them, composer A. R. Rahman’s “Jai-Ho” kicked Peter Gabriel’s original score “Down-to-Earth”.

With utter disappointment for what impact Benjamin Button had on me especially after loosing most of its awards to the subject of our suspicion… I had to watch.

It is one of the best Indian movies I have ever watched, but that’s all about it! It simply doesn’t have the potential to make its way up for neither the plot nor the performance did thrive to convince…

The movie is based on a novel by a famous diplomat, Vikas Swarup, “Q & A”, where what was missed from the series of its event weakened the plot and raised controversy…

One of the contentious out-of-place points was the Muslim-Hindi riot the director, David Boyle, referred to. In the novel, the character’s name is Ram Mohammed Thomas; a name of Hindi, Muslim, and Christian origin so that the personality doesn’t reflect any religion or sect, however, the movie passed on an unnecessary issue that added no value but raging claims from both religions.

Besides, the movie had one major missing link as in the novel; the main character was adopted by a priest, thus, explaining the reason behind him being fluent in English. However, the movie never mentioned how its slums can speak English… with a British accent to be specific

To add up, the meaningless adjustments the director decided to play with had no reason but to make the movie sound awfully miserable:

• Jamal meets and falls for Latika (who is a prostitute) when he is a grown up and not when they are kids.
• Jamal doesn’t participate in the show for Latika.
• Jamal never meets his mum who abandons him right after birth and not dies right in front of him during the riot.
• Salim is just a friend and not his elder brother.

Summing up to one conclusion; the novel had a higher aim and a deeper value and It’s not that the story as it stands needed an extra portion of drama.

The story telling is exciting and the tapped situation is by some means touching but the plot itself is typically dramatic…. What on earth are your chances of receiving your specific-life-experience questions, where you start thinking the next question would be “what’s your mother’s name?” Thanks god the situation corrected itself towards the end of the movie when I set my butterflies off once the last question came out… nicely implicating the message the movie opened and closed with…

As I have said, the movie is a nice one indeed but not a masterpiece in every simple aspect of movie making, story telling, culture significance, or movie-lovers’ contentment. Yet, the soundtrack is simply influential and moving… so I’d take back what I said and thought of about the Original Score Award… the Oscar was well deserved.

Most of you who have heard about the controversies raised from the movie, which were mostly implicated by Indians as the title caused serious damage to their dignity where social and religious activists raised lots of claims, if not law suits, regarding the image translated to the whole world about poverty, religious conflicts, and misinterpretation of the Indian culture. Without mentioning the Indian Co-Director that had as much impact as David Boyle in brining this movie to life but was never acknowledged in any of the awards where recognition was monopolized by David Boyle…. So we salute the effort and passion you have put into a movie that speaks of your own people, Loveleen Tandan.

A movie with 80+ awards and endless recognitions…. Any snooping movie lover won’t last long without watching this controversial piece… so if you still haven’t, go ahead… watch it!

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