Skip to main content
  • Slumdog Millionaire
  • Directed by Danny Boyle with Loveleen Tandan
  • Written by Simon Beaufoy
  • Starring Dev Patel, Madhur Mittal, Freida Pinto and Anil Kapoor
  • Classification: 14A
  • Rating:

A prime example of a film-festival breakout film, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire almost went to direct-to-DVD purgatory last summer. Then, after back-to-back appearances at Telluride and the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the Cadillac People's Choice Award, the film suddenly soared to the front ranks of Oscar contenders.

Slumdog Millionaire is skillful entertainment, with the simple message that the most intense life experiences yield the greatest education. Though the story elements are objectively melodramatic - orphans thrown into the cruel world, brother against brother, a long-delayed romance and a rags-to-riches journey - the film feels bracingly rude, and as lively as a whirling kaleidoscope.

Crowd-pleasing, in this case, definitely isn't the same as nice. Like Charles Dickens, Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy know sentimentality is enlivened by a generous side order of brutality, which we are introduced to in the first few scenes. An 18-year-old boy, Jamal (Dev Patel), who works as a tea server, or chai wallah, for a telephone marketing company, has somehow become the last man standing on an Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

Jamal is on his way to the ultimate prize of 20 million rupees and his improbable success has captured the imagination of the entire country. The show's grandly supercilious producer/host (Bollywood veteran Anil Kapoor) is convinced that the kid is cheating. On the night before the final question, he has the police arrest Jamal, string him up and begin to torture him into telling the truth.

Unable to beat answers out of the suspect, the Indian inspector (Irfan Khan, of A Mighty Heart) sits him down for a talk. In the multistrand narrative, we move back and forth from the interrogation room, the dazzling soundstage of the TV program and a series of flashbacks to Jamal's childhood, where he calmly explains how each incident in his eventful life made him uniquely prepared to answer the questions put to him.

Early scenes are in Hindi with subtitles (Boyle gave Indian casting director Loveleen Tandan a co-directing credit for her work with the child actors) as we follow how Jamal and his brother became orphans when a mob killed his Muslim mother. Then, with his hellraising brother, Salim (Madhur Mittal), he begins a life of petty crime. He also meets a willowy girl named Latika, who weaves in and out of his life, but they are separated when the three run from a vicious Fagin-like predator, who gouges children's eyes out to make them more successful beggars.

Running is a constant motif in Slumdog Millionaire - and the element most reminiscent of Boyle's breakthrough film, Trainspotting. The most exciting scenes in Slumdog Millionaire are a series of high-adrenalin chases through the swarming slums of Mumbai. From the opening chase (accompanied by the Sri Lankan-English pop artist M.I.A.) through the pervasive Indian soundtrack by A.R. Rahman, the music has a fierce momentum, and the camera work from Anthony Dod Mantle - in slow-motion, step-motion and wild camera angles - is completely immersive.

The transition of the children to adolescents and then teenagers (three different actors play each character) are seamless, though, as the kids grow, the pace slows down and begins to feel a trifle more mechanical. When the three amigos grow up and settle back in Mumbai, Jamal takes odd jobs to survive, while pining for the beautiful Latika (Freida Pinto), who is now a kept woman. Meanwhile, the increasingly arrogant Salim becomes a soldier to a brutal gangster.

Slumdog Millionaire does the neat trick of making us both ignore and subliminally enjoy the melodramatic manipulation, distracting us with its multistrand plot and caffeinated editing, before resolving on a predictable but satisfying conclusion.

Less obviously, the film also has an ace up its sleeve in the performance of Patel, the sad-eyed, gentle British-born actor who plays Jamal. In the spotlight of the TV cameras, the police interrogation or slipping into the world of the wealthy as a subaltern, he has a quiet observant presence. The story may stretch credibility until it's ready to pop its seams, but Patel conveys the simple confidence of a prodigy who has learned everything important in life, except how to lie.

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe