If there is one exchange in Slumdog Millionaire, the Academy’s choice for best picture, that touches the crux of the film, it would be when Jamal (Dev Patel) trespasses on a mob boss’s property to ask Latika (Freida Pinto) to “Come away with me.”  To this, the girl, who is always the more practical in these stories, replies, “Away where?  And live on what?  What can you provide?  What have you got?”   Jamal’s answer is, “Love.”  At this crucial juncture in the film, your heart either melts or you laugh.  Is giving blind love the telos of a man’s life?  Is receiving it the telos of a woman’s?

The answer is no.  And how can you not laugh at that exchange?

Slumdog Millionaire would be yet another easily dismissible Academy favorite if Danny Boyle was not such a genius.  The artistic highlight of Boyle’s resume will always be Trainspotting, but bits of his seminal work on heroin culture always reemerge in different fashions in all of Boyle’s films.  Slumdog even features one scene that pays direct homage to the iconic Trainspotting moment when Renton (Ewen McGregor) collides with a car while being chased.  The beauty in all of Boyle’s films is in the way he warps and displays traditional family dynamics in a group of oddball characters dealing with turmoil.

In Slumdog Millionaire, Salim, Jamal, and Latika start as a trio of parentless kids running around the crowded slums of Mumbai, but the older and tougher Jamal emerges as the protector and parental figure.  And once Jamal and Latika reach the age of hormones, their relationship with each other naturally takes on a new dimension.  As Jamal naively laments in and explores his feelings of love, Salim shelters his younger brother’s innocence by absorbing the vile selfishness of reality in the slums.  Salim’s good heart inevitably becomes corrupted and he becomes a Jekyll and Hyde character that is simultaneously the glue and destroyer of this family.

The complicated relationships between Salim, Jamal, and Latika are juxtaposed with a simple love story between Jamal and Latika.  Slumdog gives the clichéd interpretation of love as the ultimate metonym of fate.  As Jamal is consumed by the singular emotion, he develops his delusions of destiny.  What can be treated using neuropathological terminology is presented as reality in Slumdog with the wonderfully creative vehicle of the Indian Who Want’s To Be a Millionaire? TV gameshow.  Money and fame are often considered the antithesis of true love, and also often confused with true love.  But Jamal and his tunnel vision make him blind to both in his unlikely run on Millionaire, and yet ends up with both money and fame in his unyielding and unwavering pursuit for Latika.

And despite all this and an ending that is analogous to covering a work of art with whipped cream and sprinkles, and then devouring everything until you get sick, relegating Slumdog to the mere realm of modern fairytale is an injustice.  The courage it took to film Slumdog and Boyle’s admirable fearlessness in the face of the oppressors of cinematic creativity (the MPAA), make this movie far more original than anything that can be compared to Cinderella.  There is no denying the sheer excitement of Slumdog’s chase scenes, the entertainment value of its intentional – or unintentional – humor, and the unrelenting corniness of “It was written.” 

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD