SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE: DANNY BOYLE’S JACKPOT
January 10th 2009 11:14
Dev Patel and Freida Pinto in Slumdog Millionaire
To say that Slumdog Millionaire is a return to form for Danny Boyle is an understatement. Seemingly chasing his own tail since the diabolical mess that was The Beach, word of a new movie from the British director perhaps doesn’t elicit quite the level of excitement it used to. That should change with the release of Slumdog Millionaire, but perhaps only if he stays clear of Alex Garland.
Garland penned The Beach, 28 Days Later and Sunshine managing to make a mess of all of them. If you looked at the final pages of each of those scripts perhaps you’d find the words smudged with sweat, such was his ability to panic in the third act, his grasp on plot and character seemingly going straight out the window.
But on Slumdog Millionaire Boyle has extricated himself from his long-term creative partner, coming on late in the piece very much as a director-for-hire. Indeed, Boyle’s distinctive dancing gaze must have betrayed new levels of excitement when it settled on Simon Beaufoy’s clever and efficient script.
It tells the story of Jamal (Dev Patel), an eighteen-year-old Muslim orphan born into the slums of Mumbai, who looks back on his life while trying to find his childhood muse, Latika (Freida Pinto) and competing to win 20 million rupees on India’s massively popular Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Arrested on suspicion of cheating when just a question away from the top prize, Jamal is then grilled by the authorities who can’t believe that a simple ‘slumdog’ could possess the knowledge to go so far on the show. As he is being interrogated, however, Jamal reveals that each question corresponds to a different period in his brutal and unforgiving life.
Thus the beats to a fascinating story are fed to the audience as Jamal recounts chronologically the major episodes from his tumultuous life, each captured vividly by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, whose lens work is so effective you can practically smell the Mumbai slums, and scored with lustre by Bollywood veteran A.R. Rahman.
The players too make the most of the carefully drawn characters that are handed to them. While Patel might be from England he proves his worth with a beautifully nuanced performance, capturing Jamal’s stridency even though things rarely seem to be under the character’s control. Likewise, Ayush Mahesh Khedekar and Tanay Chheda as the child and teenager Jamals respectively are amazing finds, seamlessly integrating themselves into the character’s development.
Elsewhere, Madhur Mittal is note perfect in his irrational anger as the oldest incarnation of Jamal’s antagonistic brother, who clearly loves his sibling despite their fierce rivalry and ultimately divergent career paths. In smaller roles, Anil Kapoor scene-steals with his marvellous portrayal of Prem, the smarmy host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, while Irfan Khan lets loose his brooding charisma as the dubious inspector charged with eliciting a confession from Jamal.
Jamal (Dev Patel) dukes it out with host Prem (Anil Kapoor) on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
As good as it is, Slumdog Millionaire is not quite perfect. The story could perhaps do with a touch more background, thus lending greater gravity to the Jamal and Salim’s struggle to beat the slums they are cast into. Also, Jamal’s motivation for going on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is a little flawed, even if Beaufoy does supply a simple explanation for how easily the protagonist could find his way onto the show.
But if these are errors they are forgivable when a simple, straightforward script with a clearly definable set of characters is realised so beautifully on so many fronts. It’s a long way from his auteur-like works of recent years, but Boyle still leaves his distinctive mark on Slumdog Millionaire. His skill with strongly themed material makes him the perfect candidate to tie such a film together. Boyle isn’t afraid to sacrifice visual logic for thematic logic and it’s a gift that works brilliantly within a film such as this.
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