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!

Tribute to the spirit and resilience of Mumbai

Post 2006 train bomb blasts in Mumbai, there was a newspaper headline – ‘Mumbai Ripped Apart’. The same day, another national daily carried the same news, but with a different approach towards it. It read – ‘Mumbai Survives’. It was just the difference in various point of views from which people looked at the entire incident.

‘Mumbai Meri Jaan’ tries to deal with the same. At one level, it shows how there are people who overcame the fear of bomb blasts and moved on in life as if nothing has changed. While there is another sect of people whose lives have forever been unsettled because of this incident.

In terms of theme and format, the film is reminiscent of Naseeruddin Shah’s ‘Yun Hota To Kya Hota’ where multiple stories ran in parallel episodes and converged at the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. This one, too, has different tracks but the individual stories ‘emerge’ from the 7/11 train bombings in Mumbai. From a brilliant broadcast journalist to a patriotic corporate man; from a retiring policeman at the twilight of his life to a rookie cop at the dawn of his career; from an angry and xenophobic unemployed young man to a coffee-vendor struggling to survive and belong: ‘Mumbai Meri Jaan’ follows the lives of people from all strata of Mumbai's bustling society as they tackle the aftermath of a fatal incident that brings out the best and sometimes the worst in them.

The modern city of Mumbai is a collage of seven islands. In the film Paresh Rawal, wonders if the seven train bomb blasts, which killed over two hundred people, will divide the dynamic city again. It's perfectly observed moments like this that make the film so special. A movie like this helps society to introspect, to find its strength and drawbacks.

Amidst formula-driven films, only once in a while do you come across a movie which strikes chord with a social theme and is enormously entertaining at the same time. Only once in a while do you come across a movie that has an outstandingly original screenplay and more importantly it connects with the viewer convincingly. While the film embraces an underlying social theme, it at no point tends to get preachy and also steers away from taking sides or getting judgmental. It’s the director’s slice-of-life approach that makes you receive the film with an unconditional open mind.

‘Mumbai Meri Jaan’ is embellished with superlative performances. Paresh Rawal comes up with one of his most poignant performances in recent times, a pleasant change from his customary comic act. His climax speech that covers the plot-points of all the protagonists brings a lump in throat. Despite playing a character with similar motivations like in ‘Shaurya’, Kay Kay brings variety to his act. Soha Ali Khan is outstanding in the scene where she breaks down in the hospital. Irrfan Khan doesn’t speak a single Hindi word in the film but yet conveys immensely through his expressions. His character oozes innocence in the climax sequence where he seeks pardon in his own charming way. Vijay Maurya is exceptionally good as the idealistic junior constable. Madhavan is at his best.

This film is a brilliant piece of cinema; mainly because, it is not rushed into production like some of the other films in mainstream Indian cinema. It has spent its deserved time on the scriptwriter’s table. What we have, as a result, is a film that looks complete. For people complaining of incompetent scripts, here is a screenplay that is immaculate, intelligent and emotionally binding. 'Mumbai Meri Jaan' is a director's tribute to the spirit and resilience of Mumbai and its people. The climax is one of the most subtle and heart-rending, yet strongest ones I’ve seen in Hindi cinema in the recent times.

In a scene from the film, Paresh Rawal tells his junior Vijay Maurya, ‘Mumbai mein sirf picture dekhne ka, acting nahi karne ka’. It’s this evasive sense of responsibility that the film highlights our attention to. At least as an audience, be responsible enough to respect such cinematic attempts.