Slumdog Millionaire

I watched the movie "Slumdog Millionaire" over the weekend. This movie is about a slum dweller who takes part in the show "Who wants to be a Millionaire" and gives the right answer to all the questions leading up the highest bounty which is 20 million rupees. He is one question short of the last question when it is the end of the show for that day. He has to come back the next day to answer the last question. 

At this time, the host of the show feels that he is cheating in some way because how can slum dweller know the answers to these questions. So the police take him away and question him and try to force him to confess that he is cheating. But he narrates his past which has answers to all the questions that were asked on the show. Finally he answers the last question and becomes a millionaire. 

Essentially this is the story of the triumph of the underdog. I have seen a lot of such movies like Lagaan, Chak De India and at the end of the movie, you cheer for the underdog and you forget all the struggle that takes them  to that final stage.  Even in this movie, when he answers the last question, I felt happy and was cheering for him. 

But my cheer was not full throated. I remember when I saw Lagaan for the first time, I screamed with others in the theaters as if the match is being actually played in front of us. The reason for a half hearted cheer might be related to the first half of the film where they showed the life in slums, what the characters go thru and I felt sick in my stomach to imagine such things happen in India. 

There is a scene where the owners of an orphanage take out the eyes of a boy so that he can earn more money by begging. It was gruesome. I felt so sad that conditions like these exist in India. But here are the positives of this movie:

In short it is a brilliant piece of cinema. It is rightly nominated in so many awards functions. The story, screenplay and direction are awesome. I must make a special mention to all the child artists in this movie. They have done a brilliant job. In the recent times, Taare Zameen Par has been the movie which is considered the best in terms of child actors doing a good job. This film leaves Taare behind. AR Rahman has given a good background score. 

This film also shows another human virtue through Anil Kapoor's character. When Jamal earns 16,000 rupees, he says this is like a fortune, take it and leave. When he has won 25 lakh rupees, he tries to mislead him by giving him a wrong answer so that he does not win the bounty. And when he is one question short of winning the bounty, he gets him arrested on the suspicion of cheating. In other words, we expect poor to remain poor. We do not want them to earn more than us, be more successful than us and we leave no opporunity to tell them where they belong and where we expect them to belong.