Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire is an extraordinary movie, all the more so for being made by an British director, Danny Boyle, who’d never been to India before he started shooting there, and who spoke not a word of the language. It manages to have an essentially Indian feel to it, while also having the zest of a contemporary Western thriller.

The main character, Jamal, has had a brutal upbringing as a result of being a child of the slums, but has managed to survive and is doing reasonably well for himself. With utter resilience and native cunning, he and his brother have in turn escaped a massacre of their Muslim community by local Hindi, being kidnapped by a so-called ‘orphanage’ which turns the children into beggars – in some cases by purposely crippling them – finding themselves at the Taj Mahal and passing themselves off as guides, and returning to Mumbai, the place of their origin, where Jamal wants to find (amongst the eight or nine million people) the girl they left behind several years before.

Alongside all this back story is the contemporary one in which Jamal is successfully competing in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire – India-style. And laid over that is his interrogation and beating because he’s been accused of being a cheat while on the show. Is it destiny that allows him to know the answers to almost all the questions – or is it plain happenstance? Jamal thinks it’s destiny, it seems, and is convinced enough by his faith to push forward against the odds.

I’d got the impression that the film was a comedy – before I went. Yes, it has some comedy moments, but it’s also brutal, vicious, thrilling, heart-stopping and surging with the life of modern India and its recent past. On top of that is the realisation that the old India is rapidly fading: technology is rampant, and everyone who can afford it takes the modern world for granted. And those who can’t afford the modern India, but still have to live in it, carry on in much the same way as they always have – forced to beg, forced to live on the streets, forced to live in slums, abused, treated as of no value, and regarded as if they didn’t exist.

But for all its horrors, the film is also life-affirming: a basic boy-gets-girl plot underlines the whole thing, and the ending is joyfully upbeat. I won’t tell you how it ends, but if Bollywood seems to be being kept at bay throughout the rest of the film, it explodes into the last scene with full force. (Not that it can be kept at bay: the music throughout is vibrant and frenetic and wondrous.)
This is one of those films that just knocks you off your feet.

The Gold Bracelet

You have to wonder how many movies virtually vanish into obscurity. Once even the worst films could do the rounds of small cinemas as B movies shown in tandem with an A movie. Now, sadly, these sorts of movies go barely noticed in cinemas - if they get there at all - and wind up as more fodder for the video stores.
I was doing a search on gold bracelets, as it happened, and came across a movie called The Gold Bracelet. It’s an Indian story about the aftermath of 9/11, and how a family’s fortunes spiral when prejudice against them begins in the wake of the disaster. Rather curiously, given its serious theme, it still manages to fit a couple of Bollywood musical numbers into the script - these are possibly okay for the earlier part of the film, where the tone is more lighthearted and romantic; they seem odd for a film that veers off towards the dramatic in its second half.
Still, Indian filmmakers seem to get away with all sorts of things in their movies. One of my favourite films is Monsoon Wedding, which has comedy and drama in fairly equal amounts, but balances them out superbly. It also includes some musical sequences - not quite in the full-blown Bollywood style, but still energetic and full of fun. Maybe we Westerners just have to get used to the fact that this is part and parcel of Indian moviemaking.
The photo is of Kavi Raz, an Indian actor who wrote and directed The Gold Bracelet, and also acted in it.

Wii Wii Wii, all the way home.

What an unfortunate word ‘Wii’ is. It’s one of those instances where a word that’s fine in one language is absurd or even politically incorrect in another. US marketers have had a few occasions to regret the use of words they’ve sent overseas as product names.
A fellow blogger sent me a link to his site where he’s also got a link: to a Utube video called Wii Dancing. It’s completely politically incorrect, and uses the f-word (unfortunately) a few times in the subtitles. But apart from that it’s absolutely mad: a collection of male and female dancers in bright costumes going full bore on the side of a hill. It’s probably a Bollywood musical clip originally, but it hardly matters what it was. The subtitles have turned it into a daft song about using Wii. On the musical side it’s Busby Berkeley gone barmy, and makes Gene Kelly stomping around getting his feet wet in Singin’ in the Rain look positively tame.