I just saw Slumdog Millionaire this afternoon and, though I still haven’t seen Milk yet, I think it might be the best movie I’ve seen this year.
It’s gotten a lot of critical attention, but for those who are unfamiliar, the basic setup is this:
The movie begins with a Muslim kid from the slums of Mumbai working his way through questions of the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. The episode ends when he is one question away from winning the grand prize of 20 million rupees.
A Millioniare style question appears on the screen and asks how the kid, Jamal, got to this point:
A. He’s cheating
B. He’s lucky
C. He’s a Genius
D. It is written
We then see him being beaten and tortured by the police who are convinced that he’s cheating. He is forced to watch a tape of the show and explain, one question at a time, how he knew each answer. The rest of the movie is essentially a series of flashbacks explaining how he knew each answer .
It might sound like a bit of a corny premise, but the kid’s biography and the portrait of life in the ghettos of India is so harrowing, brutal and heart-rending that it keeps the movie from becoming too sappy, even if the ending is predictable.
The movie it reminded me of the most is the Brazillian movie, City of God. It has something of that kind of scope and immersion into a specific subculture. At its heart, Slumdog is a simple love story, but it’s also a story about brothers and the mian character’s brother is a pretty interesting study al by itself.
It’s not a movie for young kids. There are some pretty disturbing scenes in this thing. It doesn’t sanitize or pussify anything, which I think makes the payoff better earned.
If you’re looking for a sleeper, this is it.
Oh…and don’t be alarmed about the setting. It’s set in India, but it’s a British made movie and it’s(mostly) in English. The director is Danny Boye, who did Trainspotting and 28 Days Later.
Has anybody else seen this yet?
