Basically, the clichéd underdog-does-good storyline was nice and reassuring and all that, and left me feeling vaguely warm. However, as I've just hinted, it is nothing new and the structure of the film is set up to make it more affecting than it actually is. The film opens with our plucky hero being beaten up by the police for having apparently cheated - a great way to galvanise us immediately into the sort of viewer that Boyle expects us to be. This paves the way for a deluge of affecting flashbacks, which only supplement the underdog-loving gut-instinct in us that was born with the early scenes of torture. Not only was he innocent, but he's suffered too! Compound the sense of injustice with outrage!
The visual appeal of the film - as critics have already pointed out, it's quite arty-looking, all bright sharp colours and beautiful cinematography (can you tell I don't really know what the fuck I'm on about?) and the soundtrack pumped with M.I.A and A.R. Rahman doing a nice line in urgency - work with the structuring to help deliver a satisfying cinema experience (that sounds very wanky, I know).
However, I do have to agree that the characters really are pathetically underdeveloped (at times I really thought Dev Patel made Jamal come across as simply brain-damaged rather than shy-but-silently-driven). Freida Pinto, while pretty, doesn't really have to do much other than stare sorrowfully out of her pretty eyes and look small and delicate and (again), pretty. The character of Jamal's brother Salim comes across as so downright psychotic at times that it's hard to take his 'good' moments seriously, even though they're instrumental to the plot. Ahhh, the plot. Moments of serious social commentary leap suddenly out (at the vigilant viewer, that is), otherwise jostling uneasily with the highly improbable love story. I'm somebody who likes romance and really does believe in love, but... come on. In some respects, the film looks like it's trying very hard to be 'authentic' or 'realistic', in others it heads into Disney territory. Make up yer minds!
The moments of social commentary - whether intentional or inadvertent - were what really caught me. I emptied a whole week's worth of under-eye luggage weeping at a particular moment in the film which, beautifully and concisely, illustrates the brutal, horrifying futility of sectarian violence. *SPOILER ALERT* When we see Muslims being set upon like dogs and thrashed to death for no other reason than: 'They're Muslims, get them,' it is painfully, hopelessly STUPID and DISGUSTING. We don't know what this particular attack is in aid of, what provoked it - and that's what's so good about this short bit of the film. There is no bullshit justification or intellectualisation of what is nowt but bigoted hatred - we are simply and sharply reminded of the consequences of letting ideology override humanity. Families are destroyed, children are orphaned, lives are ruined.
I thought that I would offer that in itself as a recommendation for why you might want to go see Slumdog in the cinema now; what with the ridiculous loyalties that always re-emerge, smarting like an old wound that's lost its scab with every discussion of Israel/Palestine, here is a film about people trying to get beyond the religious hatred and snobbery which has hampered the beginnings of their lives.
Although it'll make me unpopular for saying it, I also found the disturbing sections showing what often happens to homeless, orphaned kiddies in India (not just in Mumbai) offered a valuable sense of perspective as we here in Britain gripe incessantly about the recession. Though people losing their jobs isn't exactly a positive result ever, at least most of us will be able to return to our families if times really get that hard, and many of us, even if we were to end up starving to death due to lack of employment, bills etc., would have somebody to look into our deaths and enquire after us once we were gone. We still have poverty in this country, undoubtedly, but many people get, at the very least, a chance at life at a young age. Virtually everyone gets schooling, for example.
Seeing the children who are lured and then bound into begging for the rest of their lives, effectively the property of their pimps and masters - seeing the prostitutes forced to keep their crying children alongside them because they have nowhere else to send them while they 'work'... I'm not going to be lame and say 'It was a wake-up call' like some bleeding-heart liberal. I knew of this before - but it was a timely reminder. Maybe, like Jamal, we in Britain need to stop trying to 'keep up with the Joneses' (say what you want, it was our terrible spending habits and sense of entitlement that created the 'recession culture', not just the banks) and think long and hard about the place money and material goods occupy - and should occupy - in our lives.
Recommended Reading.
Also, Pickled Politics is hot to trot at the moment, with a new 'Speakers' Corner Sundays' feature where Sundays are for guest writers' articles - so if you feel like sounding off about ANYTHING, go for it! I hope to at some point...
The obligatory music video so as not to head towards Monday feeling like the apocalypse is coming. Watch it, it's uplifting and happygood!
No comments:
Post a Comment