Slumdog millionaire
habshi
movies. There were advertising 'Chandni Chowk with China' with it and
that would be a much better bet.
A Muslim from the Mumbai slum with a very Hindu looking mother
ie no burqa or the horrible hijab , and of course bad Hindus set fire
to their huts. Bad Hindu policemen also beat him when they find he is
winning too much on 'who wants to be a millionaire!'
However flat rate welfare ie Rs 1000 per person per year
is essential so that no human being has to risk being blinded to beg
for their survival.
ker...@gmail.com
I had heard so much about this movie, so I made it a point to see it
in a theater rather than wait for DVD. The theater was only 1/4th full
on Saturday 10pm show for its first week run. It was one of only 3
cinema halls showing it in entire Chicago region. I wondered why a
movie so unanimously plugged by critics and fans had such a limited
release in such a lucrative market like Chicago. Barring 4-5 white
couples, the audience was exclusively Indians. There were no applause
or standing ovations during or after the movie. Audience chuckled at
couple of funny scenes but audience otherwise remained grim and
stunned throughout the movie. Acting from Dev Patel and Anil Kapoor
stood out. But overall, the movie did not impress at all.
I found this movie to be extremely dark, depressing, over the top,
manipulative, contrived, implausible, stereo-typical and typical fare
western audiences have come to expect about India. There is hardly any
redeeming value or ray of hope in the plot, characters or theme of the
movie. There is nothing in the movie that we have not seen or heard
before in countless poverty-propaganda paddled over decades. It has no
novelty except for people getting bored with India's new-found image
as a nation making the big moves on all fronts.
There is not a single positive or uplifting scene, not a single
positive or redeemable character in the whole of the movie. And this
movie is teeming with characters, at their seediest best and most
violent to their core. Even hero and heroines are not spared. They are
not your Bolywood or garden variety characters one could identify with
or sympathize with. I know I would not bring them home. How can a
Mumbai of such an immense scope and size have not a single person who
has positive or redeeming character? And yet, how did our hero and
heroine acquire so many middle-class values and middle-class ethics on
which movie rests its plot and appeal to the audience? It is cheesy to
use child protagonists to manipulate audience and exploit them to
develop plots and characters that are highly implausible.
Here are few samples of plots and characterizations that I found
highly implausible.
(Jamal and Salim are brothers growing up in the slums of mumbai. Laita
is their slum buddy and Jamal's love interest)
1) Jamal, a chai boy, speaks fluent English with western accent. Most
Indians would envy his english. How did he got that smart and literate
to read and speak? They are shown attending a slum school for a brief
scene when they were no more than 6-7yo, but to expect that they
somehow became literate within such a short stay in school in grade 1
or 2, stretches credulity.
2) How did Jamal acquired middle-class values and ethics - willingness
to commit, sacrifice for love, fidelity, aversion to greed, aversion
to crime, desire to be ordinary. There is nothing in the whole movie
to suggest the plausibility of such values upon his character.
3) Jamal falls in love for his childhood crush, Latika, who is now a
prostitute. Jamal has very casual attitude towards money and success.
He does not care for them. He is willing to hang it up all for her.
Nothing else matters in his life except Latika. That is a typical
Bolywood middle-class yarn that seems superimposed on most improbable
of characters here. What would make a prostitute, who would sell
anything including her fidelity and body for money, fall for a loser
who has no money or status or security in life? And why would a guy,
who can fall for any other woman in Mumbai, would fall for a
prostitute or value her commitment that he would risk giving up
everything for her? How and where did they acquire these 'love-
fidelity-relationship-commitment-sacrifice' values considering what
movie tells us about their upbringing? When did their transformation
as lovers took place? The movie does not make any attempt to make it
look real or plausible. Director thinks Bolywood crowd would lap it up
as they usually do, while western audiences wouldn't care about such
things.
4) Latika was a mistress of a local don and Salim. She had a
comfortable, disco and party good life, had access to power and money
of don, and protection from Salim. Why would a prostitute give up
everything for a slumdog? From where did she acquire her wannabe-lover
girl-housewife values? Jamal and Latika grew-up together as children
only for a short time, and there were far more powerful forces in
their life to give both of them their own orientation and trajectory
in life. Sentimental childhood crush of age 6 do not wash. It was not
plausible for adult of them to fall in love with each other. How they
got transformed into lovers is glossed over by the movie. For a love
story, it is a major flaw.
5) Salim turns into a right-hand man of a local don while our hero
toils as Chai boy. How could our hero avoid the lure of easy money and
crime when his brother could not? Surely, there must be something
redeeming in the environment around Jamal to transmit those middle-
class ethics and Middle-class values into his depraved slum
upbringing. But we do not get to see any of that in the movie. Not
even a passing glimpse.
6)The movie shows the transformation of Salim into crime-dog. He
becomes a right-hand man of a local don. You don't rise to such
powerful position by having soft values like remorse, compassion,
kindness, guilt, lack of loyality etc. Than what made Salim hang it
all up at the end without any rhyme or reason? Why sudden suicidal
remorse or guilt? The movie does not dwell on such transformation of
Salim. It looks contrived and manipulative for the sake of plot.
7) How and when did Latika, a slum prostitute, learnt to drive a car?
Even most of the middle-class Mumbaikars do not.
This is not Mumbai that Mubaikars can even recognize.
Response to Comments received:
========================
"you think love, humanity, kindness, etc are "middle class values""
These values do not grow on trees. Somebody in the society has to
nourish, uphold and sustain them. Like religion can't be had on empty
stomach, certain values are the province of well-fed class. Filthy
rich class can afford them but they can also afford to live without
them. Slumdog class badly needs them but most of them can not afford
to have them due to daily grind for survival at sub-human levels. It
does not mean no slumdogs can have them. Because in the city like
Mumbai, all classes exist side by side and their world mingle on a
daily basis - and people from any class or strata therefore can absorb
values from their environment. However, this movie does not show
values and classes mingling. The cosmopolitan environment, other than
its physical landscapes, is missing from the script and characters. It
paints a bleak one dimensional canvass of slumdog world in which no
other classes, values or shades of characters intersect and yet
protagonists acquire certain redeeming values as if by miracles. The
movie failed to dwell on the source of their miracles, hope. It would
have benefited all slumdogs, not just Jamal. All slumdogs are not
likely to get invited on game shows to make it. Than why give them
pipe dreams if you are not going to show them a way? Turn them into
Salim, is that the final answer? This movie flunks the answer. That is
why I called it a dark, bleak movie without any redeeming value.
"Do you actually believe that people cannot feel love or be
compassionate or kind? these are really not values that need to be
taught, these are innate human qualities. yes, sure, some people have
them beaten out of them or lose hope but really, most people want to
be good."
There is nothing innate or inevitable about values. We are not talking
genetics or biology here. People are certainly not born with values.
People absorb them from their environment. Environment makes them
available to the people. Both positive and negative people and values
exist in the environment. But it is redeeming values and positive
characters found in the environment that create the source of hope,
optimism, and triumph over the negatives and hopelessness. If you
exclude them from the scripted worldview, than there is no
plausibility of hope left for the hopeless except perhaps equally
impossible odds of winning lotto or game shows - winning the
affections of prostitutes certainly looks plausible - but in all
likelihood, it seals the fate down to the path of Salim that is not
going to be remorseful as fictional Salim is in the movie.
I do understand the movie's POV - that we all are born with innate
values but environment beats them out of people because of
dehumanizing circumstances, and movie sets out to showcase exactly
that - paint the environment as the villain thru its exclusionary,
one-
dimensional, bleak and violent take of the environment, people and
their lack of values - and celebrates the triumph of spirit of Jamal
and Latika. They won, we are told, because they already had it in
them. Therefore, movie has no obligation to show anybody/anything else
in a positive light or in a redeeming way. The movie paints a
caricature of values, hope, luck, Mumbai slums and people in general.
It is a different Mumbai, far opposite of mumbai of Salaam Bombay.
Artsy folks and critics circles usually dig this kind of trash. The
movie producer wisely chose to take it directly to them to have them
put in a good spin and buzz for the movie. He knows that the quickest
way to become celebrity and win awards in the west is to peddle
poverty and trash of India, and if one insults Indians or Hindus along
the way, why, even India's i-am-so-ashamed-of-India elites would break
out into triumphalist song and dance number.
guyana
The English are still stealing your money with a tray movie exploiting
poverty and squalor!
harmony
aamir khan is pro-terror and anti-hindu.
he poilitically actively opposed river water channelized to tens of millions
of thirsty hindus. any hindu who watches aamir khan's movies is splain
stupid and deshdrohi.
<ker...@gmail.com> wrote in message
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