wanting the popcorn to save the film is in bad taste

Monday, January 12, 2009

Glumdog

1:09 AM Posted by Gautam Chintamani , , , 1 comment
Now that AR Rahman has won the Golden Globe for his original score in Slumdog Millionaire the press is going to pump up "Slumdog" as the greatest thing since Gandhi. Triumph of the underdog India. Well Indians will always be the underdog especially when it comes to Hollywood. Like many of us I still haven’t seen the film and unlike many of us I have a few issues with the film.

Don't get too perturbed this is a common Indian phenomenon to have problems with things that we haven't experienced. Just like you accept feeling happy when anything that is remotely Indian wins some thing anywhere in the world, you must understand why some of us don't share the enthusiasm. First and foremost the biggest thing "Slumdog" got it wrong was the language. This is a story about the underdog in the most 'underdogest' place anywhere in the universe. Welcome to Dharavi. Everything smells here (according to Anil Kapoor on some excerpt I saw or heard a few days ago.) and yet the promo is full of people from all walks of life conversing in English. Would it have been too much for Danny Boyle to make this thing in Hindi and insert English subtitles? Or am I expecting too much for Boyle ain't no Alejandro González Iñárritu and this ain't Amores Perrros? Or couldn't he do an Ang Lee; make it Mandarin (
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and release a dubbed version for Hollywood. I just feel that the essence would have been captured better.

One can look past this with some effort. Remember I haven't seen the film yet so appreciate my efforts. What I can't get over is that Boyle for some NRI actor to play the central character. In a country that has a film culture unlike any other and in a country of a billion people couldn't Team Slumdog and captain Boyle find one actor to fit the bill? You get an NRI to play a character from the world’s biggest slum and his English sounds beter than the host for the evening, Mr. Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor)! Bernardo Bertolucci sold so many magazine copies thanks to his interaction with Raju the slum dweller from Delhi when he was making
Little Buddha. It's funny for Boyle decided to get master craftspeople from the Hindi film industry as companions on this journey of a lifetime but how could he get this little detail wrong beats me. All he needed to do was to sit at Cafe Coffee Day in Lokhandwala and he would have caused a riot of aspirants to portray Jamal. This in no way means disrespect to strugglers of Lokhandwala, of course.

Many people fear that, mirroring Attenborough’s
Gandhi, the stupendous success of Slumdog would spark off a mad rush of foreigners rushing to the Indian shores to make a film or two about us. I don't fear that but one needs to realize that Sir Richard had this idea in the 1960's and nurtured the thought for twenty years before finally getting around immortalizing the Mahatma on celluloid. Danny Boyle also came down to Mumbai and experienced the Maximum City before embarking on Slumdog Millionaire. But there is a difference. Times have changed. No studio would have touched Sir Richard if he had decided to make the film in Hindi. I am willing to accept that studios could have influenced him to choose an unknown Indian-Brit called Ben Kingsley over a pucca desi Naseerudin Shah to play Gandhiji. Kingsley might be a royal pain to work with now (he insists on being addressed as Sir Ben while shooting) but this was before time. I don't think Boyle would have faced any problem putting "Slumdog" together. On the contrary the goras would have loved such an idea and had he been a little adamant he would have gotten some unknown Mumbaikar to play Jamal. Boyle was adamant at other places. He adamantly gave a Co-Director credit to Lovleen Tandon, the casting director, for the great work she did on Slumdog Millionaire. She couldn't find one Indian actor to play a slum dweller....

Oh what am I cribbing about...get over it!

1 comments:

le' renegate said...

Couldnt agree with you more Gautam. I just recently watched this film and it's one of the worse in the indian-Hollywood genre. Besides the language it fails miserably in painting a true picture of the slums. It comes across awfully polished and glamourised, may be even suceeds in normalising the slum life to a 'foreigner'. It takes the reality away from reality and leaves it as a sweet little triumphant story of Jamal which may as well be fictitious as supposed to a true story that it is.