Movie Review: Slumdog Millionaire
The Horatio Alger Story Reborn in an Indian Retelling
Hunter Cates
Issue date: 2/19/09 Section: Entertainment
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1. Because the movie looks interesting.
2. Because the photo caught your eye.
3. Because you like the author (Doubtful).
4. Because it is written.
Perhaps no myth is as splendid as the American myth of the self-made man. He is the individual who by the sheer force of his own will pulls himself up by his bootstraps and makes something of himself. This is the myth that has made America the chosen land for millions throughout the world. But as vital as that myth is to our own spiritual survival, it is replenishing to learn of the myths of others.
Slumdog Millionaire, acclaimed director Danny Boyle's newest film, provides us with such an opportunity. As you have no doubt heard by now, it's a wonderful film, well worth your time. But though it seems destined for Oscar glory, having easily swiped up a myriad precursor awards, one still suspects the film is underrated. Most attention has been paid to its fantastic technical qualities, its setting in the globally vital India, or to the fact that its own underdog origin (it was almost direct-to-DVD) mirrors its plotline. But all of this misses the point. Slumdog Millionaire is a classic and timeless fable told in a very modern way about that most mysterious of Indian myths: Destiny.
We first meet Jamal (Dev Patel) as the extraordinarily successful contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? So successful, in fact, that he is being tortured by the Indian government, who suspects he's cheating. How else could this impoverished, uneducated slumdog achieve what professors and doctors couldn't? It's through a series of flashbacks from Jamal's life that we discover that it's not through brilliance and it's not through cheating. It's through fate.
For example, how did Jamal know that it's Ben Franklin and not George Washington on the $100 bill? Because as a boy some tourists gave him one after he guided them through the Taj Mahal. The film shows us a series of these vignettes, each of them prompted by a question, an ingenious method for incorporating vital backstory without resorting to tired exposition. From the destitute slums to the beautiful landscapes of India, Jamal is frequently joined by his brother Salim (Madhur Mittal) and childhood friend Latika (Freida Pinto). However these two are not disposable background characters or passive observers on Jamal's journey. They are active participants with their own motives, desires, and yes, destinies. Latika especially, whose vital role is never truly revealed until the end.
The question for the curious observer is this: Can the American self-made myth and the Indian destiny myth ever be reconciled? Or are they perpetually divided by a breach even wider than the ocean which divides our two nations, our two worlds? Your final answer?
Well, perhaps some clarification is in order. The self-made man is what he is because of hard work yes, but also because of opportunity. One can't be divorced from the other. And sometimes that opportunity is so fortuitous it could only come to serve a higher purpose. Likewise destiny comes not to those who sleep at the station, dreaming that soon their train will come in. Destiny finds us all, but favors those who find it. People like Jamal, the self-made man, the slumdog millionaire. So, in essence, they are saying the same thing.
Why is Slumdog Millionaire a masterpiece? For the same reason that anything happens in this world. Because it is written.
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