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Jamal goes for big bucks, er, rupees on the game show

Reminding me more than once of the brilliant Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge), Boyle here sets groundbreaking, hyper-stylized, breathtakingly beautiful images amidst heartbreaking squalor. Boyle's camera lists from side to side throughout the film, images askew and angles off kilter. Many shots are in close-up—never invasive, always intimate. The camera moves as if it is attached to the body of one of the shantytown's children—running, jumping and soaring through the air at breakneck speeds.

Slumdog Millionaire reveals India, both old and new, a place of filth and waste as well as rebirth and resistance. We watch as the nation embraces the 21st century, rising from the ashes of poverty for some, but at the crushing cultural price of a distinctly Western frivolity, hollowness and nihilism. Boyle does not alter the anthropological details of his location, so much as he injects his unique fantasy directly into the preexisting mix just to see how it will be remade in the image of the new setting.

Slumdog Millionaire is, quite simply, one of the best films of 2008. It is a fable, and if you try to apply the strict rules of reality, you will come away disappointed. Instead, surrender to the contrived magic of a film that dares to use dialogue like this …

"Come away with me."

"And live on what?"

"Love."

Director Danny Boyle on the 'Slumdog' set

… with not only a straight face, but an unabashed, unrepentant, irrepressible idealism. Slumdog Millionaire pulsates with life and should be celebrated loudly and lustfully. You won't find a better romantic crowd-pleaser all year. Although there is sadness and tragedy in a film that examines poverty with a Dickensian forensic lens, there is also something greater—humanity and humor, dignity and majesty that never ceases to shine through.

Boyle infuses all of his films with a haunting spirituality, seen as plainly and overtly in Millions as in his elegant zombie movie, 28 Days Later. Each of his stories operates as vehicles to steer us closer to a worldview fired by shameless optimism.

I once had the chance to speak with Boyle about the spirituality that resonates within all of his films. I asked him about the "Hollywood moments" that seem to rescue his films from dread.

"I'm an optimistic person by nature," he said. "I'm a sucker for 'up' endings, for Hollywood endings. I need hope."

He acknowledged that his films had a weighty spiritual side, though he dismissed calling them "Christian." Still, he admitted that, "There is something out there bigger, wider than we can accommodate at the moment." (See also CT Movies' interview with Boyle when Millions released in 2005.)

Although Jamal is a Muslim, it is his faith in love itself—not God—that sees him through the rough times. Time and again, Jamal combines an inherent determination to succeed with a fierce devotion to the transforming, surmounting power of love. Even at the darkest of times, Jamal's inspirational faith in love is both an ideal and a specific tether to Latika. Everything to which Jamal sets his heart and life is for that purpose alone.

Talk About It

1. In Jamal's world, poverty is pervasive, tragedy is predictable, and children and women are little more than things to smack around. In what ways does the film show us how to survive and even thrive in such an oppressive environment?
   
   
2. Jamal's life is full of teachable moments. How does his using those moments to inform his daily actions teach us how we should behave?
   
   
3. From where does Jamal mine the love that powers his life? If not God, where?
   
   
4. No matter what Latika does to survive, no matter the situations she finds herself in against her will, Jamal never stops seeing her as anything other than pure and beautiful. Who does this sort of unconditional adoration remind you of?
   
   

The Family Corner

Slumdog Millionaire is rated R for some violence, disturbing images and language. The themes are graphic (poverty, torture, sexual abuse, prostitution, robbery, murder, etc.), but are rarely presented graphically. The language is moderate, and the only nudity is that of a young child. Older, discerning teenagers could find the film illuminating. Slumdog Millionaire is mostly in English, though there are large sections in Hindi, with English subtitles.

Photos © Copyright Fox Searchlight Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures

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