Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later . . .) is among the sloppiest, nastiest filmmakers currently working, so the beautiful result of Slumdog Millionaire, written by Simon Beaufoy from Vikas Swarup’s novel, is probably attributable in the main to Indian co-director Loveleen Tandan, who has served in the past—and also here—as casting director. Boyle has never suggested possessing a drop of humanity; this film overflows with it, so it must be hers. This makes all the more distressing all the directorial prizes being won by Boyle with nary a mention of Tandan, who must belong to that most untouchable of castes: Indian female co-director.
The protagonist is 18-year-old Mumbai slum orphan Jamal Malik, who is suspected by the police of being a cheat (and is therefore tortured) while he is winning a fortune on a television quiz show. It would appear, rather, that Jamal is the recipient of tremendous serendipity; each correct answer he provides derives from a particular incident in his harrowing, unhappy young life. Thus the boy’s impossible success, which leads to reunion with the girl he loves, becomes an ironical index of his poverty, misery and suffering. Or to cast all this positively: Experience counts.
Pretty much everything works for me here. For example, I dislike melodrama except for Dickensian melodrama, and it is the Dickensian kind that we abundantly get here.
This film, with its teeming vision of Indian poverty and violent clashes, culminates in thrilling joyousness as we hitch our hearts to Jamal’s rising star. The Bollywood touch of a celebratory mass song-and-dance number is relegated to the closing credits. Let me tell you my crippled legs were also beating in time to the tune.
London-born Dev Patel plays Jamal. What a wonderfully expressive face! A star is born.
Dennis Grunes 