Dir. Danny Boyle, India/UK, 2008, 120 mins
Cast: Dev Patel, Madhur Mittal, Freida Pinto
Review by Richard Mellor
The closing credits of Danny Boyle's — yes, he of the drug-swilling, toilet-swimming Trainspotting — lavish drama sees his main characters do a dance number in Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji train station. It's tempting to watch the swaying hips ruefully; the terminus was later one of the foremost venues during Mumbai's terrorist massacres in December. But that would be to totally contradict the giddy positivity and glee of Boyle and writer Simon Beaufoy's enchanting, infectious fairytale. Glasses here aren't so much half-full as overflowing and made of gold.
This jubilant final jig — Beaufoy's idea — deliberately recalls Bollywood films, many of which throw in similar segments midway through the story (seemingly as the mood takes them). Beaufoy draws on other elements of Indian cinema, too. Adapting Vikas Swarup's novel Q&A, his script rattles along like a careering rickshaw, one carrying the motliest crew of well-drawn characters — from prostitutes to local hoodlums — and balancing a frothy cocktail of dreams, drama and — most important — romance. There's something charmingly old-fashioned about it all.
Slumdog 's slumdog is Jamal, a gangly, sincere twenty-something played by Dev Patel, known only to those who watched Channel 4's Skins (as Anwar). The story starts with Jamal being tortured by policemen. He is one correct reply from the jackpot on India 's Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and they're unable to comprehend how a poor kid from Mumbai's infamous shantytowns can be so bright. Seizing on the overnight delay before Jamal faces his final question, his chief interrogator demands to know how his charge came to know all the answers.
Millionaire 's classic quiz-show structure, building towards a climax, thus provides the neat means with which Beaufoy tells Jamal's story. Questions on the show enable flashbacks of pivotal childhood episodes: an awareness that the god Rama carries a bow-and-arrow stems from Jamal's mother's death in Hindu-Muslim riots; his musical expertise is due to time in a young begging gang led by a Fagin-like figure. The questions draw on Jamal's life in such ideal chronology that the narrative is prone to feeling overly contrived — but then again, doesn't life get harder as it goes along, just like Millionaire ?
Jamal is the ultimate rags-to-riches icon, having grown up, orphaned and living on his wits, in India 's densest, most unsanitary and violent environs. Yet Boyle and Beaufoy thankfully describe his hard-knock life without mawkishness. The Mumbai slum in particular is a vivacious riot of colour and sounds, its kids sprinting from police or playing cricket on adjacent airfields. Maudlin moments are deliberately followed with happiness and humour. Soon after a pal is blinded, the young Jamal and his brother, Salim, are delightfully conning tourists at the Taj Mahal. Stuck in a glum call centre, an ad-libbing Jamal tells a lady in Edinburgh that he lives by the "loch around the corner".
In accord with such a cheering philosophy, Slumdog 's chief motif is refreshingly love and not money. Recurrent in Jamal's flashbacks are two figures: his aggressive, more selfish brother (Madhur Mittal), and his childhood sweetheart, the girl he has never kissed, Latika (Freida Pinto). The two are forever drifting from him — Salim emotionally, as he falls in with a bad crowd and Latika physically, with Jamal spending much of his life searching for her. Jamal appears on Millionaire not for avarice's sake, but in the hope of gaining Latika's attention. It's this noble sincerity that enables his success — like the best heroes, he cares only about matters of the heart.
Patel is a revelation as Jamal: his timidity gradually paring away to reveal a deep, admirable resolve. The actor had only once visited India before the film but he perfects the local swaying head gesture — meaning maybe yes, maybe no — and makes a convincing Romeo. Mittal is excellent too, the seduction of power, fast cars and nice clothes never far from his eyes. The actors who play the boys' younger selves are equally strong, as is Pinto, a model in her first acting role. And Bollywood legend Anil Kapoor chips in with a super cameo as the suave, envious quiz-show host desperate to see Jamal falter.
In a latter scene Salim and Jamal stare down from the top of a budding skyscraper above a slum area cleared for commercial development. The evolution is emblematic of modern Mumbai and even India : commercial, capitalist and budding fast. But despite other references to this modernity — gridlocked traffic, crowded trains, a zealous media — Boyle's film remains defiantly old-fashioned. A traditional, incredible love story as well as elegant modern fable, it bursts with fun and zest. Good luck resisting it: much better to laugh, cry, cheer, sulk, fret and gasp along. And don't forget to dance at the end either.
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