Movie review: slumdog wags its tale

By Raymond Zhou

BEIJING, Feb. 23 -- Slumdog Millionaire is many

things: It is a multiple award winner, having garnered five Critics' Choice

Awards, four Golden Globes and seven BAFTA Awards. It has been nominated for 10

Academy Awards and is widely considered a frontrunner for Best Picture.

So, why isn't every Indian happy

about it?

The cast and crew of best picture nominee "Slumdog

Millionaire" arrive at the 81st Academy Awards in Hollywood, California

February 22, 2009. Left to right are actors Freida Pinto, Irrfan Khan,

writer Simon Beaufoy, actor Madhur Mittal, producer Christian Colson,

actor Anil Kapoor, composer A.R. Rahman, actor Dev Patel.(Chinese media/Reuters Photo)
Photo Gallery

From what I've read, quite a lot of Indians feel

great about this crowd pleaser. They say its depiction of poverty is "spot on".

But there is no question many are ticked off by it. And for me, it is a reminder

of the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon saga, which played out in similar

ambivalence in 2001 when it, too, went up for 10 Academy Award nominations and

ultimately won four.

The difference is, the kungfu epic was directed by an

ethnic Chinese while the kinetic fairytale from Mumbai was helmed by an

Englishman. That could bruise a few egos when the film turned out to be a

runaway success. Authenticity would invariably become the focus.

Is Slumdog an accurate reflection of reality? I

haven't been to India, which deprives me of a say in this matter. But I

speculate that certain parts of the city may look like that. However, the movie

is not meant to be all-inclusive. I'm sure there are places in Mumbai that are

middle-class clean and high-society opulent. Well, every metropolis in the world

has its underbelly.

Of course, third-world countries have more. But

countries like India and China are undergoing such drastic changes that whatever

you see today could be different tomorrow. And that is touched upon in the

movie.

The real culprit is the outsider status of the

creative force, or the principal members of it. Domestic critics picked on Ang

Lee, saying he did not really know martial arts. And domestic audiences remained

unimpressed, justifying Oscars' fascination with the rationale that Americans

had never seen high-wire fighting. Only after such towering personalities as

Louis Cha came out to endorse the movie did the public realize that Lee's

version of kungfu was nothing but better than what we used to see.

People in general do not like others to find fault

with their home country. The controversy surrounding Slumdog has happened many

times in China: Some in China called for banning Mission Impossible 3 because it

showed Shanghai residences with clotheslines outside their windows. As if that's

an offense.

Detractors of the third installment of Mummy were

annoyed that the arch villain was a thinly veiled portrait of the First Emperor

Qin (Qinshihuang). But Qin has never been loved in China. Still, emotions were

hurt, genuine or exaggerated.

I bet, if Slumdog were made by filmmakers from a

country less culturally influential than the United Kingdom, reactions from

India would be more subdued. Unbeknownst to globe-trotting filmmakers, the

setting of the story could set off politically charged repercussions. Simply

put, people don't like big guys to tell them they are not good enough. It's an

issue of self-regard, and it is a notion more rampant in Asia.

Accuracy is relative. A fantasy is by definition not

realistically accurate. What really matters is the presence of malice. I didn't

detect anything remotely malignant in Slumdog. Subtler still is condescension,

which may permeate a work of art or entertainment made by the powerful outsider.

When Hollywood tackles a third-world subject matter, it is sometimes soaked in a

kind of humanitarianism that borders on pity. But that's a murky territory

because each filmgoer may read different things into it and come out with

different conclusions.

The outside perspective has certain advantages. It's

fresh and full of curiosity. It can discover beauty that locals take for

granted. It is also characterized by less patience with social ills that locals

are numb to. We may hate it when others pinpoint our scars, but from my

observation, outsiders can better identify our strengths than our weaknesses.

When it comes to criticism, locals have the incisive perspective that outsiders

rarely possess.

Pop culture seldom ventures this deep. It's all about

facade. Slumdog Millionaire does not explain how that mammoth slum came into

being and what kind of people inhabit it. It presents saturated facets of it,

and it is suffused with so much exuberance it almost celebrates it. The real

problem with the movie is not the squalor or the destitution, but the love story

and the protagonist's personality, which are so trite and formulaic as to rival

any Hollywood or Bollywood production rolling down the assembly line, or shall

we say, swept from the cutting floor.

This is a movie that excites the senses, but leaves

nothing cerebral. It is an old tale told in a most unusual way. What if it has

the adolescents speak English where Hindi is appropriate? Details like that

indeed upset local audiences who can easily detect any discrepancy with reality.

Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh spoke Mandarin with an awkward tentativeness that

made Beijing moviegoers squirm, but these quibbles alone would not make or break

a movie.

The real value of Slumdog lies in its interaction

between the East and the West. It's an embrace of Hollywood and Bollywood. It

testifies to the potential appeal of Asian subject matters on the global screen.

This is not the best Indian movie I've seen - if it can be categorized as

Indian. The Apu trilogy is far superior artistically. But it is a movie many

outside India can relate to in more ways than one. Oscar or not, it is worth

seeing.

(Source: China Daily)