The slums of Mumbai (formally known as Bombay) is the setting for this film a love story “Slumdog Millionaire”. The pains and the sufferings in these crowded slums are the backdrop for the characters and their life choices. Hate, murder, religion, class warfare, squalor, prostitution, pedophilia, robbery go into the make up of this story, along with personal values and true love.
A TV game show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? is the backbone of this film, written by Simon Beaufoy who’s credits include “The Full Monty” and “Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day”. Jamal, nine, a street urchin from the Mumbai slums along with his brother Salim, eleven, form two thirds of the Three Musketeers and a young female urchin Latika, nine, becomes the third, after their parents are killed in an attack by Muslim haters; they are set unbound and are left to fend for themselves in a world trended by greed and abusers of children. The three, while setting up a new home life under a tent, rummaging through a garbage dump, are taken into an orphanage run by a Fagin (Oliver Twist) type character, who with far worse intentions than Fagin, intentions of such darkness it’s hard to grasp the ugliness of his and his cronies abuses on children. Their lives take another tumble here and Jamal is forever trying to bring the three back together to rekindle happier more memorable times, the way Scout, Jem, and Dill would lament their summers lost to autumn in To Kill A Mockingbird.
We sit with Jamal in his contestants chair across from the emcee surrounded by a cheering audience on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, with an Indian accent, while he is being tortured by a corrupt police inspector wanting to know how he, Jamal, an illiterate Slumdog, would know the answers to difficult questions posed by the game shows producer. We watch his success in answering the questions one by one and we become more and more taken in to his plight to become a millionaire and we do this along with an Indian nation cheering each correct answer with smiles and well wishing. However his true intentions for being on the game show are revealed only at films end.
Through Jamal’s travails in growing up he has learned to read the people who would confront him with an uncanny ability to tell the truth while disarming his combatant. The games questions and Jamal’s answers are an allegory for his path toward love and peace and he must pass these tests one by one as presented, in order to arrive at his paradise.
This is a well told story, told by Director Danny Boyle who works with this cast brilliantly bringing out the absolute best in their performances’ making “Slumdog Millionaire” believable to a Western audience, all the while staying true to the Bollywood and Hindi style of film.
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