So finally, I saw the much talked about film 'Slumdog Millionaire'. In the summer of 2008, I resisted another media hyped movie in 'Batman' purely because I didn't want to follow the crowd. The difference with Slumdog was that as a Mumbai born kid a portrayal of my home city was always going to intrigue me. And this was the case even before the media momentum began to accelerate towards towards the positive.
I have to confess, I haven't read the novel written by Vikas Swarup, which it is based on. And you haven't either let me tell you this now, this book has significant variations from what I know. Naturally this is a given, Boyle commented this had to be done in order to bring the Bollywood element of romance to a wider audience. As a viewer of Bollywood films this film was a refreshing sight. The glamour shown in Bollywood films was starting to get a little predictable. This film kept many elements real about the city I used to live in and also combined elements of a historic, social, and political nature but kept it brief so as to not distract the audience from the main story itself. The direction also deserves praise for the effortless way it combined past and present.
When I saw the nominations for the Oscar couple of days ago (this was before I actually saw the movie itself!) I was surprised that Dev Patel who plays 'Jamal' and Freida Pinto who plays 'Lathika' weren't nominated for an Oscar themselves. However given the relative lack of dialogue involved, by Freida especially this wasn't too surprising. Nevertheless the efforts of both cannot be downplayed either. Both were acting in their first films and did tremendously well. Dev Patel 'Jamal' who also acted in the UK teen sitcom 'Skinz' plays a role completely in contrast to that in the sitcom and certainly has a bright future.
One key question though, may be the answer to this is "director's/writer's license" but how did the kids learn to speak in what can be termed as 'fluent english'?
