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review of the movie with an indian eye |
The movie truly depicts the gloomy desperate picture of the indian slums. I have not read the novel but the movie sure is a masterpiece. The massive filth the slum dwellers live in, kids living on the dumpsters of the cities, the inhuman unhygeinic condition of third world countries like India, the fake transitional phases of corruption-ridden 'leaders' sucking the juice out of the economies...these are the mainlines of the movie. Too unfortunate that a non-indian movie director was the one to show us, the Indians, what we really are living in. There are a few discordance within the movie though. There are phases where it gets quite sophisticated right upto the western standard, particularly the episode of the call-centres. Indian call-centre professionals are not that high-tech barring a few exceptions. An indian 'chaiwala' (tea-hawker) cannot possibly have so much efficiency in data searching (when Jamaal tries to locate his brother through the mobile service providers' data). The central character itself is way too sophisticated to be believable. He seemed almost like a genius but then I guess the moviemakers wanted people to believe he 'was' a genius, in which case, why was he still a mere 'chaiwala'?...A rather paradoxical situation I must say... Anyway, the first part of the movie was almost true to the real facts of the slumlife in India. The weaving of the facts and the interfacing between the recent and the past, alongwith the discography made me want to dance to the pictures of poverty!! It was almost like something like poverty can be acceptable and even funky. Such representations sure make people see things in a new, more enlightening light...the problem has always been there but there was no rhyme or beat to it...Danny Boyle made everyone sit up and look into it. And, it was good in the sense that people actually put their hands under the chin and 'watched'. We, the Indians, particularly, the people who put out their hands to accept foreign grants and domestic taxes, can start to re-evaluate their accounts, an excess of which will only create voids in their own lifepatterns and make their children want to lavish on their parents' and grandparents' wrongly earned money. Take only as much as is considered normal and distribute it among the ones that need them most...the slum-dwellers reeling in the hands of poverty. Get rid of the filth, make the kids' lives more human, more tolerable...earn something for India...and thank Danny Boyle for showing you how it really is... |