'Is That Your Final Answer?'
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
Directed by Danny Boyle
Starring: Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor, Irfan Khan and Freida Pinto
Interested in a big screen version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Perhaps you're looking for a gritty coming of age journey? Do you like foreign language flavored arthouse dramas? Do adrenaline-fueled flashback / flash forward adventures pique your interest? Perhaps you're not fussy about genres so long as True Love conquers all? If any of this appeals to you than Slumdog Millionaire might just hit your sweet spot. It has a habit of doing that if you've been following its pre-release festival life through to its great per screen average in limited release. The rest of us can just marvel at how much high-speed juggling this frenetic Oscar hopeful does.
Slumdog tells the rather hard to swallow story of a orphan boy in Mumbai --his mother is murdered very early in the picture -- who competes on his country's franchise of the global Millionaire phenomenon. Miraculously he knows all the answers without so much as a grade school education. The game show is concerned that he's cheating and, to allay their suspicions, Jamal (Skins star Dev Patel) explains how he came to know the answers. The film toggles between this investigation, the actual game show and multiple vignettes about his childhood and adolescence that reveal how he came by these very random answers.
Though Slumdog comes to us from the UK and is mostly filmed in India it's a Hollywood picture through and through. Jamal is in essence an exotic mutation of Hollywood's crowded gene pool of idiot savants. Think Forrest Gump, Rain Man or any number of characters who lived by their wits and natural abilities, exceeding far beyond their intelligence, training and education levels. In short: it's a fairy tale.British director Danny Boyle began his career making gleefully sadistic / amoral pictures like Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. His films are far less anarchic now but the through line in his filmography is the energy. Slumdog's shakier elements --its somewhat disturbing core beliefs about fate and learning but also the very limited emotional palette served up by the actors in the central love story --are easy to ignore what with so much happening on the screen. And so quickly, too! Boyle keeps the energy flowing throughout and the pace is always brisk. The editor Chris Dickens gets a real workout on his Avid. The cumulative effect of so much frenzied editing (this is but a step away from an action movie) is numbing. The production design by Mark Digby and the cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle have a similar more is more and then less equation. At first you want to dive into the gorgeously saturated colors but as the movie progresses, the line between "gorgeously saturated" and "garish" starts to look a little blurry.
Slumdog's overt enthusiasms trip it up on more than one occasion. One unfortunate scene involving the fate of Jamal's brother is so overtold, slo-mo'ed and crosscut it plays as self-parodic of a big dramatic moment. The story's redundant insistence on reinforcing the comfort food of the "everything happens for a reason" belief system also makes the plot so deterministic that the audience feels like a presumptuous afterthought. You'll surely want to cheer Jamal on but it's a passive rooting interest. In other words, and if you'll allow an off-Slumdog reference, Tinkerbell won't die if you don't clap. You don't need to believe in fairies. Jamal's journey is D-E-S-T-I-N-Y ... nothing you feel and no plot obstacle dreamed up could possibly alter it.
With so many of the movie's strengths also doubling as weaknesses, the final impression is crucial. Fortunately, Danny Boyle nails his dismount. The final giddy flourish in Slumdog, so wisely withheld, well judged and utterly cinematic, proves a giddy endearing release from the tense, relentless movie before it. You'll leave the theater on a high... even if, like me, you weren't so sure about the preceding two hours.
B-
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