Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Slumdog Millionaire

I quite liked the movie.

- I thought the two young kids who played Jamal & Salim, are awesome actors; mature beyond their age, and with beautiful sparkling eyes. The "Jamal-meets-Amitabh" moment is for me one of the most memorable cinema moments of all time... :)

- Liked the whole concept of bollywood-isation of the movie; love triumphs over all & ends with a mass dance-do. Cute :)

- I was born & raised in Bombay; I've seen what a slum looks like - from the outside & from the inside; and like most people from the city have acquired the ability to stay unmoved when I come across slum-life, poverty, or child beggars. But inspite of that, some of the scenes from this movie did move me.

- Liked the little twist of irony in the end...the one piece of "knowledge" that Jamal had the opportunity to pick up from a book (The Three Musketeers); was the one piece he didn't know.

9 comments:

shakester said...

I’m tired- I just had an involved (and fortunately articulate) debate on this move with someone at work. I will write about if I can sometimes, but he probably disliked the exact things you just mentioned you like (barring Aramis)

Radha said...

Shakester,
Well, I wasn't blown away by the movie; but I liked it a lot. It was a "gritty reality of Bombay" meets the "fairy tale of Bollywood" kind of a movie. And it worked I guess partly because its made by an outsider; not a bollywood insider.

Happy Reader said...

I've been wanting to watch this movie for a long time now. Glad you liked it. I am hearing many positive reviews about it

Satyajit said...

wonder if the movie would have been received the same way if an Indian had directed it. anyway...

Am going to make a movie:

Set in the US about a black child sold by his prostitute mother to her pimp, grows up in the hood peddling drugs, gets pick up for a crime he did not commit by white cops, meets Martin Luther King. Jr, converts to Islam, gets beaten by white cops which is caught on tape, survives on food coupons, wins a rap contest, serves in Iraq, scholarship to Harvard via the affirmative action policy, converts back to Christianity and eventually becomes the president of the US.

Oscars...here I come.

CJ said...

i haven't seen the movie and i don't think i ever will.Because 1:i hate realistic movies and 2:because i feel that outsiders always prefer depicting india as poor,or backward you know snake charmers and all.

shakester said...

radha, I liked it a lot too. Was just saying how POVs can be so different.
@ 'Recipes' : actually, its not that realistic :) you could give it a shot.

Radha said...

Happy Reader,
I hear its quite different from "Q & A". Let me know how you like it.

Satya,
:) Its not about the plot, its about how the movie is made. I thought will Smith's "Pursuit of Happiness" was a boring depressing movie; though made on a similar plotline (although with not as much masala as yours).

Recepies,
Hi. Well, everyone has their own preferences & likes; but I think a good movie is a good movie; whether its about the slum-life in India or the call-centers in India.

Shakester,
I'm sure a lot of people didn't like the movie for the whole bollywood feel-good angle added to it. But it worked for me.

Jas B said...

I liked the fact that everything Jamal learned was experiential...infact bitter experiential. Something quite like the dialogue I always say to my buddies, "Zindagi ne thokar mar mar ke sikha diya!" :D

Chica, Cienna, and Cali said...

i keep hoping i will get down to watching it one of these weekends.....and it just keeps getting postponed!!!!! the amount of attention it has garnered here is funny.....now i have my colleagues asking me all about bombay and its workings......did you ever get a chance to watch a movie called "Outsourced" ???? I never knew about its existence till a friend pointed it out recently........now I want to watch that one too...