Slumdog Millionaire: Trash on a Pedestal

Slumdog Millionaire is cotton candy; it's junk food because it tastes good, but dissolves fast. Thematically and emotionally, it offers pseudo-profundities that only seem really deep. Its declarations of fate, for instance, are no deeper than those found in the ultra-consumerist anime Yu-gi-oh!. It provides us with nothing profound or troubling to think about, instead indulging the audience in what it wants to see, rather than what it ought to see. It is an instance of trash revered as art; audiences and critics fawn over it because they don’t know the difference—or because they can't find anything better. Slumdog Millionaire is no more artful than Armageddon, and the Bruce Willis picture is arguably a more genuine and honest work. The thing that irks me about Slumdog is its aspirations to be more than it is and the attention that’s lavished on it as if it’s a work of truth and brilliance. It is not art, it has nothing especially challenging or interesting to say, and frankly, it’s an emotional dud.

Slumdog is so dependent on its gimmick that if we were to remove it, we’d see how banal the movie really is. The Who Wants to be a Millionaire angle is little more than a novelty. The indictment of westernization is slight and innocuous; the let’s-see-how-he-knows-the-answer business is contrived and shallow. What’s more, that silly question at the beginning and the answer at the end merely make a gimmick out of the gimmick; it’s like a parody of parody. Such a juvenile declaration of fate deprives the audience of anything to think about. “It is written.” No questions, please.

Such a message not only has little basis in reality but flattens the characters in the story. Instead of representing real people with real thoughts, feelings, and aspirations, these characters become one dimensional pawns used by the movie to appeal to the mass audience and their wishes. The movie's been called a love story "above all" but does it even do a good job of that? We're frequently shown our star-crossed lovers Jamal and Latika separated or being separated by outside forces, so it’s no wonder we’re getting all anxious to see them [finally] be together. But they spend so much time apart, I begin wondering what Jamal even knows about Latika. In pretty much their only conversation, they dream about what they’ll be able to buy (“weddings, government things, big parties…Big money”). Their concerns are entirely juvenile and materialistic, but the real problem is they don’t grow up. Especially Jamal. I remember the inspector saying to him: “all you think about is money.” That, and Latika. So it’s money, money, Latika, money, and Latika.

Jamal is such a banal character that I wonder how people could take a liking to him. He’s not the one making things happen; things are happening around him and he either lucks out or not. That’s the whole premise of the movie and repeatedly Boyle provides us with imagery that shows Jamal as the helpless but spirited kid from Bombay. Early on, we see alternations between Jamal on the show with the Indian version of Luis Guzman and being tortured by the host’s private investigator. The torture scenes hold no power to shock us, just as the shaky camera and dutch angles galore don’t have the impact they should. This is because Boyle releases his tension in little bursts, thus desensitizing us with excess.

Rather than see a single spike of violence, we get it diffused across a scene; rather than a single, jarring cut to a dutch angle, Boyle cuts, cuts, and cuts from one dutch angle to another—I swear it’s like a seesaw. Such effects seem effective, but only intellectually so. This is the problem with the shot-by-shot analysis I’ve grown so weary of; it’s academically true, but we lose the flavor and feel of the picture when we start assigning meaning to individual shots and cuts. In other words, we think about what we should feel without actually feeling it. Boyle probably saw Do the Right Thing or The Third Man in film school and decided dutch angles would be good for chaos/change/character development/tension/emotion. The thing is, he uses it for every one of those things to the point where the shot no longer has the impact it once did. These effects would be forgivable if Jamal weren’t such a shallow, underdeveloped character.

The movie is so intent on dazzling the audience that our understanding of its characters suffers. What do we know about Jamal? Well, early on we see him incapacitated, with the interrogator stringing him up, slapping him around, and running electricity through his toes. Dev Patel excels at that I-just-got-slapped expression but it’s about the only one he can do. We then see a young Jamal about to catch a cricket ball but then getting blown over by an airplane’s gust. Such images peg him as powerless; he is subject to whatever fate the heavens have in store. “It is written” the movie concludes, but by whom? Is it God? Not likely, since the movie barely carries any religious weight to it. The only person actually seen praying is Salim, and he’s hardly given any sort of proper redemption. He dies in a bathtub full of money, having “redeemed” himself by helping Latika. Yet this final act—perhaps the only humanist one in the movie—is completely dropped by the end as Dev Patel and Freida Pinto lead into a Bollywood dance number.

It’s like the movie wants to show you terrible things, but then wants you to forget how badly they made you feel. Yes, the poor, poor [bourgeois] audience needs some consolation for the frightening realities they’ve just been exposed to, so here’s a Bollywood dance number. Salim, who is probably the most human and realistic character in the movie isn’t given the time he deserves. He’s Jamal’s brother, but his death is glossed over by 20 million ruppees, [finally] meeting at the train station, and breaking out into an exhuberant dance number. The movie wants to give its audience an endless respite from the horrors it shows, but it is so intent on—or maybe obligated to—showing those horrors in the first place. Everything it does is designed to defuse terrible realities. A child covered in shit isn’t meant to garner our sympathies but is there for comic relief. Indeed, the audience I saw it with roared with laughter at a young Jamal covered in excrement. The scene is as absurd as the Who Wants to be a Millionaire device and is pure novelty; it’s no more than exploitation.

That Slumdog has been showered with awards is a sign that Kael was right when she said: “When we championed trash culture, who knew it would become the only culture.” Slumdog Millionaire is little more than wish-fulfillment, but what makes it so detestable is it obviously aspires to something greater. It reminds me of that Simpsons episode where the producers of Itchy and Scratchy are trying to figure out what their audience wants: “So you want a realistic, down-to-earth show that’s completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots?” Slumdog wants to show awareness to the reality of slum life. It wants to be a compelling love story, it wants to make its audience happy but uncomfortable, and it wants to criticize westernization while embracing it all the same. It’s a movie that thrives in the politically correct milieu we have today and is just as wishy-washy. It ends up doing everything half-assed; it’s like the [often liberal] person who wants to be politically and globally “aware” and knowing, and achieves that by a skim of the newspaper headlines.

Much of my argument is dependent on how Slumdog Millionaire has been received, which is usually frowned upon. But to evaluate such a movie—which is so beloved by critics and audiences alike—in a vacuum forgoes one of the main functions of the movie medium. Perhaps more than any other, movies are a public medium. Public perception, while not everything, is integral to evaluating a movie; how a work is perceived indicates its merit. To simply blame the audience for misinterpretation precludes artists from reproach and rejects the responsibilities they have. In the end, however, it’s a two-way street. Audiences are to blame for idolizing and enjoying a movie that turns shit-covered children into a laughing stock, and the artists are to blame for feeding them such wishy-washy, pandering “art.”

Sin Nombre & Slumdog Millionaire: Two Takes

Sin Nombre, written and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, is a film that has been in my head since seeing it yesterday. It's a magnificent, uncompromising film and I do hope it does well at the box office, as it is Fukunaga's directorial debut and an extraordinary one at that. If you've seen El Norte, you'll instantly recognize the story and perspective that's taken here. Yet stylistically, El Norte is rooted in magical realism, whereas Sin Nombre adopts a neorealist approach to its subject matter. I can't really decide which I like more, but I feel both are valuable portraits of South and Central American immigration. While mulling it over in my mind, I couldn't help but think about the critics' darling of 2008: Slumdog Millionaire, and perhaps this is the result of repressed honesty on my feelings towards that film. More on that later.

First, a bit on Sin Nombre:

Sin Nombre tells two stories that eventually converge. Willy is a member of La Mara gang, and his young friend Smiley is a new recruit, having passed his initiation by members of the gang kicking him until he can barely walk and is covered with blood. We are brought into this seedy underbelly of society and witness horrific acts of violence as the two friends try to prove their worth. Willy has a girlfriend, Martha Marlene, who he keeps secret from the gang. When she is discovered, she is accidently killed by Lil' Mago (one of the gang lieutenants and reminiscent of, wait for it... Lil' Dice from City of God) when he tries to rape her. Willy eventually kills Lil' Mago, and in the process, meets Sayra, her father, and uncle. They are a Honduran family fleeing north to a better life. The rest involves an attempt to escape the grasp of La Mara and cross the border northward.

That the scenes depicting gang life are grisly and uncomfortable is to the film's advantage, I think. Cinema, by in large, falls into two categories regarding acts of violence these days: glossing over it, or exploiting it. Sin Nombre is a hard-nosed portrait of gang life that neither sugar coats it, nor fetishistically revels in it. The result is a film that approaches its subject matter realistically and pragmatically. In this sense, the film draws from the strengths of neorealism: commonplace characters (many extras here were cast on location) with simple, realistic goals, plausible situations, and a clear, focused narrative.

What the movie accomplishes very well, I think, is a strong contrast that mirrors the impetus to emigrate in the first place. In the beginning, for instance, the film jumps back and forth between the stories of Willy and Sayra. With that staggered narrative comes an undulating sense of comfort. With Sayra and her family, we feel safe. With Willy and El Mara, everything feels dirty, grotesque, and dangerous, and there is desire to leave those scenes at least on a level of comfort. The scene between Lil' Mago and Martha Marlene is perhaps the most potent and horrifying, in part because you can see it coming before it ever happens, and because it is an unflinching, honest representation of reality. That she is killed almost becomes a reprieve for her as well as the audience, yet the possibilities between living in a gang (where it seems everything, women included, is communal and shared) and death are not a choice that anyone should have to make. In a way, she is spared from a life of humiliation.

The imagery and look of the film are exceptional. This type of movie hearkens back to older, on location methods of filmmaking.

The dynamics and camaraderie of the immigrants hitching a ride on top of trains is a miraculous image, and the one that first piqued my interest in the film. What the film does is simply observe this community, furthering its neorealist approach while creating images of events that are happening right now as I type this. The image, for me, is both surreal, yet documentary. It is Werner Herzog who says:

"What this world needs is more images, and that is something I am trying to work on."

Somehow, I think he would approve of Cary Fukunaga and Adriano Goldman's final product. Sin Nombre is a film that presents a dichotomy; a world that is both startlingly beautiful and hideously grotesque. Because of this, the film feels complete. It does not drag us deeper into despair with no hope, nor does it gloss over the horrors in false feel-goodness. I think it is because of the neorealist approach that it manages to work so effectively. Sin Nombre is a film that I hope does well, and I will certainly be examining it more in the future.

Everybody Loves Slumdog:

I'm going to be brutally (more like tough-lovely) honest. I don't love Slumdog Millionaire and I certainly don't offer laudatory praise, like so many others. I see it as Hollywood kitsch disguising itself as independent, international cinema. I just don't see what the praise is all about. By no means did I hate it, and I actually found quite a bit to like, but I kept asking myself: What exactly is this film trying to do?

I have heard of Slumdog Millionaire being called a brutal portrait of the Indian slums, which I'd only agree with if by "brutal" you mean "fantastical." It is not uncompromising, but rather caters to the audience's ultimate desires rather than ground itself in reality. Is it a bad thing to eschew reality? Absolutely not, but for me, Slumdog Millionaire amounts to little more than a child's fairy tale disguised by violence and shit-covered children because of this.

There's one problem I had: The film defuses any discomfort the audience has through comic relief, thereby lessening any messages to be had (which the film is clearly trying to convey). There is so much gloss and diffusion of reality that it's difficult to glean anything profound from the film. This is evident nowhere more than when Jamal, who sees his Bollywood hero in the distance, must crawl through raw sewage and water to get there. Is there supposed to be something funny about this? The audience I was with roared with laughter. Haha! Look at the little shit-covered Indian boy! Don't you find that funny? I sure do because I'm an American bourgeois living in my suburban home, driving my kids to soccer practice in my Volvo station wagon and I won't ever have to see anything that ludicrous in real life! Now the question is, was that reaction by the audience a misinterpretation of what the film was trying to do or did the film want to elicit that reaction? Judging by the timing and the editing, I think it's pretty clear the audience was supposed to have that reaction. For me, that doesn't make sense, I don't find that funny, and I don't really know what the film was trying to accomplish with that little stunt.

Another thing that annoyed the hell out of me was the cross-over to english as well as the bizarre subtitles. I can actually understand, allegorically, the importance of the crossing over to english as a parallel to India's westernization, but I get the feeling it was merely another way in which the film caters to the audience. That brings up the question: why is catering to the audience a bad thing? To answer that, I would say that it is not a bad thing necessarily, but it is overused. To some level, you have to give some sort of comfort level to the audience otherwise you risk losing them entirely. What abusing this does, however, is create a sense of complacency in the audience. I think the expectation of a happy ending is so ingrained in audiences today, that any movie that dares to have a sad one is largely deemed "bad" or "okay."

The subtitles, I hear, were jazzed up with colours and would appear next to whoever was talking because the director wanted to engage the audience more. Mostly, however, I found this distracting, and somehow I doubt Danny Boyle was trying to make some profound statement about that. Shots that call attention to themselves (or fancy-schmancy shots, as Wilder would put it) have their place in cinema. But lately, I feel this "Queasy-Cam" effect is sweeping the industry in all the wrong places. What, exactly, does incorporating distracting elements to a dramatic picture do for the movie? Ah yes, that's right, it distracts us from the weakest part of Slumdog Millionaire: the dramatic arc of the story and its characters.

I don't see Slumdog Millionaire as much more than a fantasy that almost completely glosses over the horrors of slum life. It is a fairy tale with destiny as its ultimate message (or something, I'm not really sure). Every character we are supposed to like is absolutely gorgeous. Even the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? host is a sexy version of Luis Guzman.

For me, the most annoying aspect of the film was Jamal. James Berardinelli writes:

"Boyle's feature draws the viewer in, immersing him in a fast-moving, engaging narrative featuring a protagonist who is so likeable it's almost unfair."

This, I don't understand at all. What exactly, is so likable about Jamal? I found the character underdeveloped and simple-minded to say the least. The relationship between Jamal and Latika, that is buried under great physical distance, a lot of quite cutting, dutch angles, and catchy Bollywood music, reveals itself to be rather thin and uninteresting. He meets her once, he falls in love and will scour all of Mumbai to be reunited! Jamal's fortune, too, arises not out of his own cunning, but out of luck. Or is it fate? Luck? No, it's fate. The movie makes sure of that. The notion of destiny rarely interests me, because it takes free will out of the equation. If we are not acting of our own free will, then what's the point? Boring.

Far more interesting a character (disappointingly underdeveloped, then completely forgotten about by the end) is Jamal's brother, Salim. Had the film focused more on him than the weak storyline of Jamal and Latika, I might hold it in higher regard. That and getting rid of the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? segments, which take up maybe half the movie and amount to little more than a gimmick to put into posters. What seems like an arena ripe for social commentary amounts to little more than a waste of space and loss of time that could've been used to develop characters. The problem with Slumdog Millionaire, I think, is that it is messy. It tries to have its cake and eat it too, and the result is a half-baked romance and a half-baked indictment of western culture.

What Sin Nombre has, and what I feel Slumdog Millionaire lacked, is a sense of focus and restraint. Sin Nombre divorced itself from any overt politics and chose instead to focus on the people themselves. Slumdog Millionaire wants to be a wonderful romance while simultaneously preaching the dangers of westernization, and the result is muddled.

I now open the floor to [constructive] criticism.