Slumdog - But is this the real India? Not quite right!

I missed reviewing Slumdog. Sometimes you plan on doing some things and never end up doing… But, after Slumdog’s sweep of 8 Oscars, I decided to do it…

I did not like Slumdog. Or perhaps I should say I was not very impressed. Maybe it was all the hype, the Oscar buzz and the ‘It is sooooooo awesome’ first-person accounts I have heard over the last few weeks that led me to go into the theater with unrealistic expectations. Perhaps…

Although Slumdog has received rave reviews for its cinematography, the film doesn’t quite live up to its protagonist’s words 'You want to see the real India? Here it is!’ In Slumdog, there's a lot of exaggeration and harping on well-worn clichés about India. People live in garbage heaps. Hero jumps into a huge heap of human excreta and without batting an eyelid comes running out covered in brown slime. The hero, a Muslim, sees his family slaughtered by Hindu rioters and sees along with it a rioting kid dressed as lord Rama. The Hero is booked on the flimsiest of charges and then he is beaten black and blue in a police station. What else? Let’s see…. Child prostitution. Forced begging. Blinding of innocent children. Rape. Human filth. etc., etc., well, yes these things do happen in India. However the problem is when you show every hellish thing possible happening to the same person. Then it stretches reason and believability and just looks like you are packing in every negative thing that westerners perceive about India! Why? Is it because audiences and jury members feel good when their pre-conceived notions are confirmed?

Keeping aside Slumdog, let’s say I make a movie about the US of A where an African-American boy born in the hood, has his mother sell him to a pedophile pop icon, after which he gets molested by a priest from his church, following which he gets tied up to the back of a truck and dragged on the road by some clansmen. Then he is arrested and sodomized by a policeman with a rod, after which he is attacked by a gang of illegal immigrants, and then uses these life experiences to win ‘Beauty and the Geek’? Even though each of these incidents have actually happened in the US of A, I would be accused of spinning a fantastic yarn that has no grounding in reality, that has no connection to the ‘American experience’ and my motivations would be questioned, no matter how cinematically spectacular I make my movie!

Coming back to Slumdog, If there is anything unique about it, it’s the use of the millionaire game show device to further its plot (even though the links between the plot and the questions are tenuous and sometimes extremely artificial), which I believe is one of the primary reasons why people get caught up in the movie. The same reason they get caught up in reality shows like ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ and get up and cheer when a total stranger gets a crore bucks! I also don’t understand why the host of the show is shown heartlessly mocking the fact that the contestant is a humble ‘chaiwala’, I don’t think this kind of class-based running down will ever happen on any show!

There are too many things and bloopers you have to accept in order to enjoy Slumdog and prominent among the bloopers is its reference to the 15th century Hindu poet Surdas. The song 'Darshan Do Ghanshyam Nath Mori' sung by a blind beggar in the film as credited to the blind saint-poet Surdas, was actually penned by N S Nepali for a 1957 film called ‘Narsi Bhagat’.

Danny Boyle has constructed a fairytale with a dash of Indian exotica and a love story. Which means Slumdog has infinite license for taking liberties and surely Boyle has taken too many cinematic liberties by making the darkness darker in order to brighten the halo around the hero and heroine!

Slumdog might remain a memorable film for 8 Oscars and its cinematic brilliance. But is this the real India? Not quite right!