(d) It is written


Highly acclaimed and rightfully so, “Slumdog Millionaire” has one of the most unique structures of any film I’ve seen: the main character, Jamal – a superb performance from the young Dev Patel – is on television, on India’s version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. He is presented with the questions and we are shown, through extensive, vivid and sometimes brutally shocking flashbacks of his incredible life experiences, how he has come to know each of the answers.

Without giving away too much, we see how Jamal and his brother Salim grow up in the slums of Mumbai, India, where they meet Latika. Jamal and Latika realize very early on that they are soulmates, and the film, we find, is actually at its heart a story of how of the power of their love survives all of the many (and there are many) obstacles thrown in their way. It also reminds us, brilliantly, through the structure of how Jamal has come to know the answers to the questions on the game show, that in life, things do happen the way they’re meant to happen, when they’re meant to happen – it’s the energy of the Universe, which works with our own energy, giving us the tools to achieve exactly what we are seeking, on a deep soul level.

Danny Boyle has said in interviews that the city of Mumbai is a city of contradictions, where the slums exist literally in the midst of the more affluent sections, and he wanted to capture that reality. He has most definitely succeeded, both in the film’s kinetic energy and in the way the story veers from horrific brutality to lyrical moments of beauty and everything inbetween, sometimes all at once. And Dev Patel is a real find, who can register childlike hope in one second and intense, gritty resolve in the next – a perfectly modulated performance. And the actors who played the 3 characters as children were all brilliant and perfectly cast, as well.

I did have a little problem with the writing in some of the off-camera game show scenes, plus in the scenes with the older Jamal and older Latika (the gorgeous Freida Pinto), it seemed that she was older than he was; it turns out she indeed was born nearly 6 years earlier. This sort of detracted from the power of these scenes, for me; if they could have either made Pinto look a little younger or made Patel look a little older, it would have been more effective, I think. It’s a dazzling piece of film making, nonetheless, and make sure you stay for the dance sequence, over the end credits. It rocks.