Slumdog Millionaire

FILM

Slumdog Millionaire

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Oscar Wilde; from Lady Windemere’s Fan

Knee-deep in filth, poverty and human degradation, Jamal, the hero of Slumdog Millionaire, is certainly in the gutter. But here is a streetkid with a dream… and despite the film revolving around him competing on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, this is a story about love not lolly.

Danny Boyle’s films often feature stashes of cash (Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, Millions) but screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty) deliberately steers this away from a rags-to-riches tale to make it all about Jamal’s attempts to win back his long-lost love.

He does this by entering the quiz show where he’s mocked for being a cha wallah at a call centre by the smug, creepy host, who then gets Jamal arrested when he’s on the brink of taking the top prize, unable to see how a kid from the slums can possibly have got so far without cheating.
Under brutal police interrogation, Jamal recounts how he’s been able to answer the questions so far, and as he does so his remarkable story unfolds.

Shot with the vivacity and vibrancy of City of God, and with the same feel for ‘photogenic poverty’, Slumdog Millioinaire is an uplifting, feelgood film despite (or maybe because of the triumph over ) the squalor, the violence and the corruption. There is something Dickensian about it, it’s a celebration of life in all it’s beautiful, terrible richness.

It’s a brilliantly realised film by Boyle with Skins star Dev Patel proving an engaging lead and awards said to be in the offing. What’s most heartening is that a mainstream movie set in the gutter can be such a critical and commercial success without being at all mawkish or overwrought.

It’s a film with a sense of wonder that leaves you with a smile on your face, and you can’t ask for better than that.