Danny Boyle is memorable for his stark realism mixed with fantasy and his latest Golden Globe award winning Slumdog Millionaire, again brings together these two opposing styles. The Beach and 28 Days Later both gave a convincing portrayal of how leading characters might react to unrealistic situations.
Based on the novel by Vikas Swarup, an unimaginable sequence of events leads to slum-dweller Jamil Malik (Dev Patel) winning the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The first overwhelming question on everyone’s lips is how does a call centre chai-wallah (tea-boy) know all the answers? The police, equally baffled, question the young Maharastran to find out if he is a cheat, a genius or just plain lucky.
Malik’s traumatic life from Mumbai’s biggest slum, the underworld of trafficked child beggars, to a fake tour guide in Agra unravels in flashbacks, revealing how certain memorable times have imprinted the answers to the questions on his mind. As he nears the 500 million rupee jackpot, we have become entangled in Mailk’s tumultuous life and relationship with his gangster brother Salim (Madhur Mittal) and love of his life Latika (Freida Pinto), meaning we are on just as tender hooks as the slum dwellers watching the programme across India, pinning their hopes on this symbol of a better future.
Boyle captures the noise, smell and squalor of Mumbai’s slums, with corridor camera shots along to the busy bombing beats of M.I.A. And yet the shintz and vibrant hues of Bollywood are compounded with the harsh truth of India’s poverty, ultimately sending you out of the cinema with the warm tingling feeling that you have witnessed a truly extraordinary event.
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