That’s a very good point. For all the little things I did like about Slumdog, the love story is the center, the heart, and the purpose of the movie, and it was pretty much - to use the vernacular - an epic fail, and the reason I could never consider this a great movie. I think with a few years’ time most people will probably agree with us, even sven.
Do people in India like hats so much that they’d watch a show called “Who Wants to be a Milliner”? I just don’t get it.
D&R
Yeah. The movie never explains why there’s a love story. It’s just sort of there, dropped into our laps, taken for granted. (“It is written,” so to speak, which is a really lazy storytelling technique). If you don’t accept the romance – and I didn’t, because the adult versions of Jamal and Latika have no personalities – then the movie is kind of pretty, kind of interesting, but ultimately rather pointless.
(And not to overly zombify the thread, but WTH Equipoise, did you work on the movie or something? You should have just gone and started a blog called “I love Slumdog Millionaire more than you” and saved yourself a dozen or so posts in this thread).
P.S. I can’t believe no one has given a shout-out to Elendil’s Heir’s milliner joke – ha! Well played!
There’s a fundamental difference between love stories in Bollywood movies and love stories in Hollywood movies. Here’s a nice quote from the screenwriter Simon Beaufoy:
I can understand that not appealing to you and others, but it is based on a history of Bollywood movies, just like the ending credits. However, I did think the kids had more personality than the adult Jamal and Latika.
Huh? That was random. This is such a zombiefied thread I don’t even remember what I said that caused this, and I have better things to do than go back and read the entire thread. I liked the movie. So what? So did a lot of people (it won 8 Oscars in case you didn’t hear). It wasn’t even my favorite movie of the year though, The Fall was. It wasn’t even my choice to win the Oscar, Milk was. But I did like it. Who cares? Geez.
Well, fine, but saying “It’s from Bollywood” really doesn’t excuse anything, just like saying, “It’s a B-movie” doesn’t suddenly turn shitty effects and worse acting into Oscar material.
Do you agree that the romance in the movie was delivered as a given rather than established? If so, doesn’t a total lack of motivation for reunion quest sort of gut the movie? Or is it something you can overlook? (And if so – how?? Because it seemed pretty devastating to me).
Re: me saying you should start your own blog, it really resulted from me reading the entirety of this thread, where (seemingly) every third post was from you gushing about the movie. In the context of a live thread, I’m sure it’s normal, but in the all-at-once experience I had, it seemed egregious. My apologies for being snippy.
I just accepted that Jamal fell in love with Latika as a child, and grew up always loving her. It’s that simple.
I suppose I did have a lot of posts tracking the awards season, but you have to keep in mind that when the OP was started, hardly anyone had heard of the movie, only deep insiders. The movie could have easily been quickly released, play a few weeks to a modest but decent indie-level box office and then disappear. It was almost released straight to video, so it playing in the theater at all was a triumph. When it started getting awards attention I became more and more convinced that it would definitely be nominated for some Oscars, including Best Picture. I tried to convince DMark of it. Posting awards as they happened was a “damn, will you look at that, wow, see?” kind of reaction. I was amazed at the depth and breadth of love for it myself. I did just scroll through and did see that I popped up fairly often, but you’re right, it was in the heat of the thread and I can see how it might seem as if I was dominating it.
I still loved The Fall and Milk more though. It’s just that The Fall had zero chance of being noticed at awards season (cry) and Milk was a given to be acknowledged at awards season. This one was iffy, could have gone either way. It could have been as obscure and ignored as The Fall.
But even that explanation lacks any… er, explanatory power. The boys tell Latika to follow them as they escape the Hindi mob, then Jamal invites her into their storage container during the downpour, then they’re sort of hanging out together at the dump when Mauman takes them, then there’s the scene with the chilies on the willie, and finally the big escape where Latika can’t run fast enough to catch the train. That’s it. The next time Latika is mentioned, she’s as Jamal’s love interest as he searches the brothels of Mumbai.
And we’re supposed to infer an all-consuming love between Jamal and Latika from such a brief montage? There are no shared moments between Jamal and Latika. Hell, it would have been just as believable had Salim been the one to pine away for Latika as they were fleecing tourists at the Taj Mahal.
I understand that establishing a budding romance pre-escape would be difficult, because they were children… but I think that only reinforces my point that the romance – the most crucial element of the movie – develops only in the imaginations of the viewers, not in the film itself.
It’d be like Gandalf telling Frodo that he has to go destroy the One Ring without even mentioning that Sauron wants it to conquer the world:
G: Go to Mordor and destroy the Ring.
F: Er, why?
G: Because this is a Bollywood… er, I mean, epic movie and so you must fall in love… dammit, I mean go on an adventure.
Or Neo being told by Morpheus that he must fight bad guys, without even being told that The Matrix exists and everything is fake:
M: Come with us and fight.
N: Woah. Er, I mean, why?
M: Because you’re awesome.
Seriously, the only reason Jamal pursued Latika is because It is Written, and that’s a pretty half-assed reason.
It comes out on DVD Tuesday. I’ll be interested to see the extras.
quixotic78, I’m guessing you’ve never read Romeo and Juliet?
Well, the movie does establish early on that Jamal is the romantic one and Salim is the mercernary one. And the movie does establish that, from the very beginning, Jamal and Latika had a connetion that Salim was resistant to. They grew together as friends (until they were separated in the trainyard)–in a life full of poverty, oppression, flight, and other difficulties, is that hard to imagine that he might idealize the one other person in his life that he was close to? You make it sound like, if there isn’t a “falling in love” montage to paint it in the broadest of strokes, you have no evidence that a relationship is possible. But there is evidence of a connection, and while you conflate incidents as being right next to each other (Monday: storage container, Tuesday: dump, Wednesday: orphanage, Thursday: train), I (quite reasonably, IMHO) assumed that time was actually passing between these moments–time where they spent all their time together. So, before they ever reach puberty, we already know that Jamal has only two friends in the whole world, his brother and Latika. Again, is it so hard to believe that he would idealize her over the years? And that over that time, she’s been completely friendless as well, so that she might idealize that relationship the same way?
You’ll get no argument from me that the two lack a certain chemistry as adults. But they unquestionably love each other–perhaps more in an agape way than an eros way–and that they both represent to each other what they long for most in their lives: the freedom of being happy with someone who cares about them unconditionally. And for that, I think the movie provides plenty of evidence throughout. He didn’t love her because It Was Written. But he did end up with her for that reason.
Add to that that the two times they meet after the train yard split, when she’s getting dressed as a young girl and as a adult in the boss’ house, they both show immediate recognition and love on seeing the other half.
It opened in Bangkok three weeks ago or so. An excellent film. But say, wasn’t there also a scene in Trainspotting in which a main character was covered in shit? Is this some sort of Danny Boyle trademark?
Well I finally saw it and loved it. The criticisms I’ve read that it’s unrealistic or that the love story wasn’t developed just didn’t bother me. I viewed it as a fairy tale, told in a wonderful cinematid fashion in a unique setting. Worked, wonderfully, for me.
Same here: a formulaic boy-meets-girl/boy-loses-girl/boy-gets-girl-back romance set, with brilliant effectiveness, in the least romantic setting possible. We’ve seen the same plot done to freaking death with whining yuppies, but modern Third World India*- a landscape at once as exotic as Atlantis and horribly real to western audiences- completely gave it new life.
Sidenote: The writer of the movie said that while (and this is fairly easily checked) the amount of money Jamal wins is ‘only’ about $400,000 in USD, it has the spending power of about $3 million in terms of housing and lifestyle. I thought this interesting. (Anyone have any idea what the Indian tax structure is like?)
*I know that many Indians would be quite pissed to be referred to as Third World and most in fact are not, but the slums in which the movie is set [and most people who’ve been there agree that the real ones are if anything much worse] are Third World at best.
I think it established that Jamal is the compassionate one – especially relative to his brother – but you’re seeing romance because you want to see romance.
Friendship, sure. Most definitely. But love? Like, full-blown, all-consuming romantic love? Naw.
His brother, you mean? He didn’t idealize his brother.
Of course a relationship is possible. Hell, it’s “possible” that Jamal could have developed romantic feelings for the kid who got blinded. But that’s not in the movie, so I would have felt pretty ambushed had the plot went that direction. And you know what? I did feel pretty ambushed when they created the romance between Jamal and Latika out of the blue while they’re parted after Latika can’t keep up with the train.
A romantic connection? :dubious:
Very little – no, scratch that, none of which was shown. Look, sure, it’s possible that a very tender and heartfelt romance developed between prepubescent Jamal and Latika off-screen. But they never showed it on screen. Which is rather odd, to say the least, given that the romance became such a key point in the film.
Look at it this way – in Rocky, they could have left out all the training scenes (punching the meat and so forth), and just shown Rocky totally ripped as he steps into the ring against Apollo Creed. We could assume – quite reasonably, IMHO – that Rocky trained off-camera. But wouldn’t that really undercut the whole angle that a scrappy, determined man can do just about anything if he has the will? Similarly, the writer and director of Slumdog Millionaire left all the scenes showing the development of a romantic relationship out of the movie. I think that undercuts the point about the power and strength of love.
Well, not exactly, I don’t think so. Two really close friends, sure, but I’m sure they had friends before their mother died, they had friends at the dump, they had friends in Mauman’s camp. But maybe I’m nitpicking.
No, it’s not hard to believe. It’s just weak, especially when they could easily have given us a little something as evidence for a romantic relationship. And for something so crucial to the movie, to punt on its execution… weak.
Unconditionally? I thought Latika put pretty strict conditions on their love when Jamal the dishwasher was at the gangster’s house.
Others in this thread have mentioned the similarity with a fairy tale, and that sounds about right. Prince Charming doesn’t love Snow White because they have a ton in common and a deep, fundamental connection. He loves her because he’s the Prince and she’s the Princess. That’s very shallow – just as shallow as Jamal loving Latika because they spent a few (admittedly emotionally laden) years together as children. It’s not a deep love, IMO, and that really hurt the movie. Especially when they could have done something more than the nothing they did to show that a romance could develop between Latika and Jamal.
She didn’t want him dead. She had consigned herself to a life of misery and was trying to protect him. When she first saw him you could see her true feelings for a few seconds.
From the final scene “I thought we’d be together only in death”.
I disagree with this. It’s apparent that Jamal is obsessed with Latika and I’m fine with calling that love for the sake of going along with the flow, but it’s quite questionable to me that Latika loved Jamal. I’m not saying he had no value to her. He was her rescuer who kept bailing her out of bad situations. Almost every one of their encounters involves him swooping in to save her, or attempting to do so. But outside of this interaction, we have very little to base a mutually enduring passion on. Add on the flat acting of the adults and this aspect of the story is further handicapped.
Latika is a plot device, not a character. She’s presented with no personality and we know nothing about her life prior to Jamal’s discovery of her. All we know about her is that she is beautiful and passive. She exists only so that Jamal has something to fight for. Her own wishes and desires are immaterial, which is why Jamal never asks if she loves him or wants to run away with him. He just tells her to.
I’m another who wasn’t bothered in the least by the “no falling in love montage”. To me it’s immaterial whether he’s in love with Latika or not- it’s very possible he’s not, but he LOVES her in some respect. I saw her as more like his family than the great love affair that didn’t happen.
In a country of 1.2 billion people there are only two people he truly loves- his brother (who has gone to the dark side and can’t be saved) and Latika. Whether he’s in love with her or not is less important than the fact he needs her, and she needs him, and they love each other- they’re simultaneously like brother-sister/platoon mate-combat veterans/lovers/awaits to be seen, but whatever the ultimate outcome they need to be together.
Hopefully they’ll become lovers & spouses & life-partners for 80 years/2 kids both in medical school/matching Volvos/shared private jokes/great sex/comfortable silences, but even if it’s just comfortable silences and shared private jokes and speed dial and being Aunt Latika and Uncle Jamal to each others kids one day, that’s fine. It means they’re not just orphans adrift in an ocean of people, millions of whom may be like them but none of whom they can completely relate to. To me the movie would work if Jamal is gay or only likes fat Irish Catholic schoolgirls- it’s not romance but love that makes him find Latika, and loves a whole lot stronger than romantic infatuation.
Kevin Baconing it a bit: Dev Patel’s in SKINS with Nicholas Hoult who was in About a Boy. That movie has a line that I love about how couples aren’t the future because you need back-up, and that’s what Latika and Jamal are to each other.
PS- I think the movie would have been cheesy if Latika had been just a girl he was in love with. Or, continuing the Bacon strategy:
Jamal is questioned by a Police Inspector played by Irfaan Khan who appears in New York I Love You with Orlando Bloom, who was in Kingdom of Heaven (and Pirates of the Caribbean) with Ghassan Massoud. In a great scene between their characters in KoH Balian (Bloom) asks Saladin (Massoud) what Jerusalem is worth to which he replies (you have to see the scene to understand how well it works- I’ve only seen Massoud in those two movies but he does wonders with an expression or gesture) that Jerusalem is worth…
That’s what Latika is to Jamal.
Rs. 0-150000 → tax exempt
Rs. 150000-300000 → 10%
Rs. 300000-500000 → 20%
Rs. 500000+ → 30% + 10% surcharge
So, for income Rs. 800000 after deductions and credits, tax is calculated this way -
Step 1: (150000 x 0) + (150000 x 0.10) + (200000 x 0.20) + (300000 x 0.30) = 145000
Step 2: 145000 x 1.1 -> 159500 (no surcharge for income below 500k)
The above is for males. Women and senior citizen have more liberal tax slabs.