Slumdog Blues

To travel, and to look up in wonder at new cultures, is indeed a virtue. It is when you look for something with an agenda in mind that problems arise. Such problems are not new – colonisation was a mix of wonder and commercial aspirations.

To make a good movie is looking at the art itself with wonder, but wanting to make a good movie about India for the world audience is agenda-setting.  This means that you have to avoid cumbersome details, use clichés aplenty to get the message across and make the language much simpler for a foreign audience. This also means that you end up alienating your subjects themselves.

“What works for the West may not necessarily work for India,” Madhur Singh, writing for the Time magazine hit the nail on the head while commenting on the lukewarm response to “Slumdog Millionaire” in India (Slumdog Millionaire, an Oscar Favorite, Is No Hit in India; January 26, 2009). There is a sense of “so what?” as you watch the supposed classic. Brilliant as it may be, the cinematography of Anthony Dod Mantel captures nothing more than what a pair of eyes never fail to steer clear of in this country.

In retrospect, making the characters speak English, that too, in British accent may not have been a bad idea, after all. It is only a natural extension of looking at the oriental from your perch, and it helps immensely if the exotic can be made to speak in your tongue. Also, imagine Mr. Boyle spending valuable time and resources in research, only to come up with the same script in Hindi, which would, of course, flop worldwide trying to look like a cheap version of “Salaam Bombay.” Now at least “the world is watching.”

Bi/multi-linguals are not new to the Indian movie industry, but they were always made with a certain degree of sensitivity. The standardisation of language in “Slumdog” is pathetic; it assumes that a mass of people will pass up the fact that our chaai-waalahs rarely speak fluent English, rarer still, with a British accent. The use of Hindi is merely an ornament – probably for lack of good translators, Hindi expletives had to be retained in an otherwise-English torture sequence.

But of course, Bollywood cannot wash its hands over this attempt at standardisation, for it is guilty of doing the same to the various dialects of Hindi. Bollywood, though can claim that it was denied many Oscars in the past in the event of “Slumdog” winning any. Even though music is no concern of mine, it can be said with confidence that A.R. Rahman can woe the many missed Oscars if he receives one this time.

The movie itself, as many would agree, is entertaining like Vikas Swarup’s “Q&A” on which it is based. It is fast-paced, tells an interesting story told in well shot frames with Rahman’s music to boot. The children are cute; the violence, shocking. In other words, typical Bollywood fare. For those who never saw that before, “The film's universal appeal will present the real India to millions of moviegoers for the first time” (Roger Ebert, in a website named after him). Whatever the “real India” means.

Maybe he was too engrossed in drawing up the perfect tourist guide that Danny Boyle forgot that something different was expected of him. Nothing changes in the movie – the old stereotypes are maintained and clichés preserved for a sequel. Freida Pinto remains a prop, which would have been no different had it been another Indian movie. Salim’s change of heart at the end is unconvincing, so are the death sequence and the cryptic “God is great” line, which pretty much adds nothing. Simon Beaufoy has done a commendable adaptation for the screen, but the western world’s attitude to Muslims is telling in the change of name of Mr. Swarup’s protagonist from Ram Mohammed Thomas to Jamal Malik.

It is sad to note that for all the talk of meritocracy, good marketing makes good cinema. As things stand, “Slumdog” is poised to win multiple Oscars. One merely hopes that this inspires a new crop of filmmakers to tell the world that there is more to India than Danny Boyle.