Nerve Endings Firing Away

This post comes awfully late and probably after nearly everyone in the blogosphere, desi or otherwise, have opined on the movie that they either love or love to hate but anyway here goes. We saw Slumdog Millionaire in mid-December at one of those early select theaters screenings in Houston. We had heard good things about it but went in with no high expectations and loved the movie. It has been released all over the world now and is even playing at our local theater which for a movie of its size is a rarity.

The storyline is well known now and is largely inspired by Vikas Swarup’s Q&A (my review) and Suketu Mehta’s writings on Mumbai in his book, Maximum City. On the face of it, it is a typical masala entertainer replete with grisly details of, as every critic has said, Dickensian state of Mumbai’s street life especially for kids. I don’t think Danny Boyle set out to celebrate poverty or squalor of Mumbai. He just made a love story on the lines of a typical Bollywood script (“we’ll live on love”) and interspersed it with dark humor from the life of street-smart kids that we see everywhere you go in Mumbai. So as an entertaining movie with a fabulous background score, it works in capturing your fascination as you cheer Jamal Malik on his way to becoming a millionaire. The slum chase scene accompanied by A R Rahman’s thumping O Saaya was one of my favorite moments in the movie and reminiscent of a similar scene in City of God. Like others, I too preferred the kid-Jamal instead of the largely-inexpressive adult Jamal. The underworld aspect and even the love story was half-baked but did not slow down the movie’s pace.

So why is this movie loved by the Western critics and loathed by their Indian counterparts? Part of the reason of the latter’s grievances is the former. The general thought is that why does the West love depictions of Indian poverty especially when we have a “rich and varied heritage” that movies like Paheli which are sent to the Oscars depict. But then why should any movie with Indian or remotely connected to India expected to “make benefit glorious nation of India”? After the phenomenal economic success and rise of India in the eyes of the average foreigner, why do we still insist on showing India through rose-tinted glasses? We fully understand that one movie cannot depict everything that defines India so I see no reason why we still keep insisting on it. As far as I know, the image of Bollywood in the U.S. or other western countries has increasingly been subject to change in recent times and more & more people are aware of mainstream Bollywood movies with all their dancing and color. Of course, we don’t keep insisting that people just don’t break out into a song and a dance in the middle of the street. The average Western moviegoer in fact is more likely to enjoy Indian movies; they enjoy melodrama more than they care to admit (nothing else can explain the mind-boggling success of Titanic).

Indians are proud of the fact that Bollywood makes the most movies in the world and now enjoy a global audience right from the Philippines to Africa. We celebrate the general escapism that our movies provide us. Shah Rukh Khan might be the most-popular movie actor in the world right now if you count his fans from all over the world. We can never be sure why some movies will be liked more than others otherwise all movies would be a hit. Perhaps Slumdog Millionaire taps into the western need for a masala movie with, I admit, gaping holes in the plot, and dark humor with a simple love story that makes you feel good when you leave the theater in spite of all the toilet scenes and violence directed at children. Instead of harping on the criticism that this movie was liked only because a Westerner made it, Indian movie makers would do better if they take a page from the success of this movie and tap into other markets. We already are seeing the rise of parallel cinema which is a refreshing change from the more popular commercial trash so such experiments are always better in the long run.

The sentiment that a mere movie defines and depicts a large country like India in poor light is in itself a reflection of insecurity and craving for outside validation. Why do we gristle at any suggestion or depiction of India’s poverty when it is virtually the first thing all visitors sees when they land at the Mumbai airport? There are umpteen movies made by Indian movie makers that focus or even celebrate poverty overtly. Our first Prime Minister in fact saw profit as a dirty word and his great-grandson and Prime Minister-in-the-wings still sees his poor constituency as the ‘real India’. And Boyle made no suggestions that this is the only India he sees; it only turned out that his character was surrounded and influenced by his hard life hence the genius of the script.

Let us just see the movie for what it is and not dwell too much on why a certain part of the world prefers to like it. Like some say, any publicity is good publicity. Perhaps Slumdog Millionaire would lead people to explore other Indian movies and may in the future provide a larger opening for more mainstream Indian movies especially the ones in the parallel stream. A R Rahman has definitely arrived on the global scene and given his talent and immense contribution to the Indian movies, it was long overdue and I’m glad for his success. I hope he wins both his categories at the Oscars even if it means riding the coattails of the movie (any serious Indian movie fan will admit that Jai Ho is not his best work). So Mr.Bachchan and other detractors, relax and enjoy the ride; the perceptions of India will sort itself out and you don’t have to personally manage its PR campaign. It works for soda products not for nations.