slumdog millionaire

Go see Danny Boyle’s slumdog millionaire.

Danny Boyle is one of the earth’s great living film makers. Trainspotting. 28 Days Later.

The movie is so beautiful. Go to a really good movie theatre to watch it.

It starts out pretty violent and you think, OH NO! But though there is violence throughout, really, this is a fairy tale. OH NO! But really, it’s about a really amazing pair of brothers who survive being orphaned. The early scenes got me the most. I was very close to my brother growing up and there was always a sense of surviving by helping each other out.

What happens is, and I’m not ruining anything here, Jamal wins the top prize of India’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire but the cops think he cheated because it is implausible that a kid from the slums could know such answers. But then, the movie shows Jamal’s life, in flashback, through very fabulous filming and how it is that he knows the answers. And it’s not from simple accretion of knowledge. He also gets answers right by searching into his understanding of people, of the host of the show, his native intelligence. It’s a brilliant conceit, based on a novel. At times we get a little bogged down by this conceit, but not much.

Over time, the flashback careens into the present story and we get to the final round of the game. And Jamal wins. Again, not a spoiler. You know that up front. And there’s a girl involved. And guns. And mobsters. And lots of slum shots. And India today, changing faster than ever. Beautiful. Beautiful. Chaotic, fantastic, Democratic, messy India.

But really, what I loved mostly were the two brothers surviving childhood.

And: That Danny Boyle can really make a movie. Man.

Go to the website. It’s quite something. You can get lost in it for a week.
slumdog millionaire

And then go see the movie.