Slumdog Millionaire – An Asian Big Break
Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 British film directed by Danny Boyle, written by Simon Beaufoy, and co-directed in India by Loveleen Tandan. It is an adaptation of the novel Q & A (2005) by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup.
Set and filmed in India, Slumdog Millionaire tells the story of a young man from the slums of Mumbai who appears on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (Kaun Banega Crorepati, mentioned in the Hindi version) and exceeds people’s expectations, arousing the suspicions of the game show host and of law enforcement officials.
After its world premiere at Telluride Film Festival and subsequent screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival and the London Film Festival, Slumdog Millionaire initially had a limited North American release on 12 November 2008 by Fox Searchlight Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures, to critical acclaim and awards success. It later had a nationwide grand release in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2009 and in the United States on 23 January 2009. It premiered in Mumbai on 22 January 2009.
Slumdog Millionaire was nominated for ten Academy Awards in 2009 and won eight, the most for any film of 2008, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score and Best Original Song.
It also won five Critics’ Choice Awards, four Golden Globes, and seven BAFTA Awards, including Best Film. Slumdog Millionaire has stirred controversy concerning language use, its portrayals of Indians and Hinduism, and the welfare of its child actors.
Set in 2006, the film opens in Mumbai with a policeman torturing Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a former street child from the Juhu slums. In the opening scene, a title card is presented: “Jamal Malik is one question away from winning 20 million rupees. How did he do it? (A) He cheated, (B) He’s lucky, (C) He’s a genius, (D) It is written.” Jamal is a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (Kaun Banega Crorepati) hosted by Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor). He has already won 10,000,000 rupees (about US$200,000) and has made it to the final question, for 20,000,000 rupees, scheduled for the next day. Following up on a tip-off from Prem Kumar, the police now suspect Jamal of cheating, because the other possibilities — that he has a vast knowledge, or that he is very lucky — seem unlikely. For almost every question, Jamal had a life experience that enabled him to answer it.
Jamal then explains that, while at least the question about Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan was very simple, he knew the answers of most questions by chance, because of things that happened in his life, conveyed in a series of flashbacks documenting the details of his childhood. This includes scenes of him obtaining Bachchan’s autograph, the death of his mother during anti-Muslim violence (rekindling memory of the 1993 anti-Muslim attacks in Mumbai in the slums),[6] and how he and his brother Salim befriended Latika (Rubina Ali). He refers to Salim and himself as Athos and Porthos, and Latika as the third Musketeer, the name of whom they never knew.
In Jamal’s flashback, the children are eventually discovered by Maman (Ankur Vikal) while they are living in the trash heaps. Maman is a gangster (a fact they do not actually know at the time they meet him) who pretends to run an orphanage in order to “collect” street children so that he can ultimately train them to beg for money. Salim is groomed to become a part of Maman’s operation and is asked to bring Jamal to Maman in order to be blinded (which would improve his income potential as a singing beggar). Salim protects his brother, and the three children try to escape, but only he and Jamal are able to do so, catching up to a train which is departing. Latika catches up and takes Salim’s hand, but Salim purposely lets go, and she is left behind as the train accelerates away.
The brothers make a living, traveling on top of trains, selling goods, picking pockets, and cheating naive tourists at the Taj Mahal by pretending to be tour guides. Jamal eventually insists that they return to Mumbai since he wishes to locate Latika, which annoys Salim. They eventually find her, discovering that she had been raised by Maman to be a culturally talented prostitute whose virginity will fetch a high price. The brothers attempt to rescue her, but Maman intrudes, and in the resulting conflict Salim draws a gun and kills Maman. Salim then uses the fact that he killed Maman to obtain a job with Javed (Mahesh Manjrekar), a rival crime lord. Salim returns to the room where the three were staying and orders Jamal to leave. Jamal, knowing his brother is here to claim Latika as his own, attacks his brother violently before being overturned by Salim and confronted by a revolver as Salim threatens to kill him. Latika intervenes and tells Jamal to leave, sacrificing herself to keep him safe. With Maman’s men searching for Salim, Salim and Latika flee to an unknown location, leaving Jamal alone to fend for himself.
Years later, Jamal has a position as a tea server at a call center. When he is asked to cover for a co-worker for a couple of minutes, he searches the database for Salim and Latika and succeeds in getting in touch with Salim, who has become a high-ranking lieutenant in Javed’s organization. Jamal confronts a regretful Salim on tense terms. Jamal asks him where Latika is. Salim, annoyed and bewildered that his brother still cares about her, responds she’s “long gone.” Salim invites Jamal to live with him, and after Jamal follows him to Javed’s house, he sees Latika (Freida Pinto) there, and she also notices him.
He bluffs his way in, pretending initially to be a chef and then later a dishwasher. Jamal and Latika have an emotional reunion, but elation quickly turns to despair after Jamal discovers that Latika is betrothed to Javed. Upon discovering this, Jamal tries to persuade Latika to leave. She rebuffs his advances and insists that he forget about her and leave, but instead Jamal confesses his love for her and promises to wait for her every day at 5 p.m. at Mumbai’s largest train station, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (C.S.T.), until she comes. One day, while Jamal waits there, Latika attempts to rendezvous with him, but she is recaptured by Salim and Javed’s men. Javed slashes her cheek with a knife as Salim drives off, leaving a furious Jamal behind with a crowd of onlookers.
Jamal again loses contact with Latika when Javed moves to another house outside of Mumbai. In another attempt to find Latika, Jamal tries out for the popular game show because he knows that she will be watching. He makes it to the final question, despite the hostile attitude of the host who feeds Jamal a wrong answer during a break. At the end of the show, Jamal has one question left to win two crore, or 20 million rupees (about $400,000 U.S. dollars), but the host calls the police and Jamal is taken into police custody, where he is tortured as the police attempt to learn how he, a simple “slumdog,” could know the answers to so many questions. After Jamal tells his whole story, explaining how his life experiences coincidentally enabled him to know the answer to each question, the police inspector calls Jamal’s explanation “bizarrely plausible” and, knowing he’s not in it for the money, allows him to return to the show for the final question.
At Javed’s safehouse, Latika watches the news coverage of Jamal’s miraculous run on the show. Salim gives Latika his phone and the keys to his car. He urges her to run away and to “forgive him for what he has done.” The final question asked of Jamal is to name the third musketeer in the story of The Three Musketeers. When Jamal uses his Phone-A-Friend lifeline to call Salim, Latika barely answers the phone in time and they reconnect. She does not know the answer to the final question either but she tells Jamal that she is safe and said “I am yours” in unsubtitled Hindi before the line cuts off. Jamal guesses the correct answer (Aramis) to the question of the one The Three Musketeer whose name they never learned, and wins the grand prize. Simultaneously, Salim is discovered to have helped Latika escape and allows himself to be killed in a bathtub full of money after shooting and killing Javed. Salim’s last words were “God is great.” Later that night, Jamal and Latika meet at the railway station and they share a kiss. It is then revealed that the correct answer to the opening question is “D) it is written,” implying that it is destiny. During the end credits, in a scene reminiscent of many Bollywood musicals, they — along with dozens of bystanders and even the juvenile versions of themselves — dance in the C.S.T. train station to the song “Jai Ho,” the title of which epitomizes victory.
The success of the film not only made the entire country embrace the sense of reality that was depicted in the story, but also embraced the fact with full pride that even a thrid-world country like India may have something that the entire world can look upon and look up to – Our wonderful gift of creativity, adaptation and natural talent that is meant to be known not only in Asia but to the entire world.
Asian Talents flooding Showbiz spots 