My Beef With Slumdog

I finally watched Slumdog Millionaire. Yesterday. I couldn’t keep on telling my friends and students I had not seen THE film yet. I was, after all, from India, and I have a relationship of sorts with filmmaking. So I yielded.

Let me be very clear from the outset. Yes, I was aware of Amitabh’s displeasure and the ire of Patna slum dwellers – Amitabh Bachchan’s annoyance is perhaps explicable in light of the fact, he is, still, the face of Bollywood cinema, as well as the original face of the Indian version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire,” the TV game show; I expected controversy amongst Indians – as is usual with internationally acclaimed films about (or set in) India highlighting uncomfortable facts about life in that country. I was, also, keenly aware of the accolades at the Oscars, the appreciative remarks of friends who loved the film, the joy of patriotic Indians everywhere who believed SM signaled a coming-to-terms of sorts for both Hollywood and America – that Bollywood cinema (and India by association) was now a force to contend with. The prevailing mood, India 'hath arriveth,' could not be missed in SM's Indian supporters despite the misgivings of SM haters who believed certain distressing scenes would only confound India’s newly resurgent image on the world stage.

So, where are my loyalties? Did I love the film? Yes and no. It’s complicated. I wish Indian cinema and India well but my loyalties are to excellence in cinematic storytelling and the right of people everywhere to dream, pursue whatever they wish to pursue (as long as it causes no harm to others,) and live freely without fear. Not to clichés and false patriotism.

Slumdog Millionaire might look like a Bollywood film (I know Amitabh really hates the term) but it’s not. The obvious needs restating sometimes: although SM is set in India and has an Indian cast it is NOT your garden variety Bollywood musical. Its success in Hollywood, in the context of Lagaan’s ‘failure’ to wrest an award from the Academy, some years ago has several reasons: it does not have the required song and dance numbers that readily identify the standard Bollywood product - (the Jai Ho number is a tribute;) SM does not feature leading men and ladies whom Bollywood devotees will recognize as movie stars (Anil Kapoor and Irrfan Khan do not count as neither one of them is the protagonist) - no Amitabh (save the few sly references), no Aishwarya, no Abhishek! - I've named the first family of the hindi film industry deliberately because they continue to dominate Indian cinema; no song and dance sequences to mitigate the jarring effects of scenes depicting poverty, squalor, child abuse, police brutality, crime and anti-Muslim prejudice. The story of SM is told using the idiom and syntax of international cinema, not the regional dialect of Bollywood; it connects with an international audience mainly because of this reason.

The language of international cinema notwithstanding, SM is still ersatz cinema as far as I am concerned. Why? For the same reason this post should not be considered English literature even though the writing is in English. This is where I will lose most people who loved SM. (Mainstream American or Indian audiences do not really need my opinions on either Hollywood or Bollywood cinema, they do fine without me.) While SM might have won at the Oscars, great world cinema it is not. I will elaborate on this idea below.

Let us ignore the series of coincidences that Slumdog’s narrative premise is based upon. While storytellers who know their craft understand they cannot explain their story through a deus ex machina ploy they also know good storytelling is about making the incredible, credible. SM succeeds quite well in this regard and most audience members will not dwell long upon the improbable odds of matching game show questions with answers from a slum dweller’s life experiences. But that’s the magic and art of storytelling. In fact, the makers of SM appear to be aware of the magnitude of what they have pulled off – they brag (in a manner of speaking) about their achievement through Irrfan Khan’s character (the police officer) in the scene where he labels the alleged cheater’s explanations as “bizarrely plausible.” Now, that’s storytelling machismo of the first order. Give credit where it’s due.

What I am unable to appreciate is the lack of internal consistency in the older brother's character; the scriptwriters abandoned their craft by failing to properly set the stage for his change of heart. Not once, twice! I was not convinced, the first time, when he betrayed his younger brother – the brother he had rescued from permanent disfigurement earlier; I was not convinced, again, when he flip-flopped at the end of the film. No credible motivations were offered for either character unfoldment. This is a serious flaw in the script. Perhaps the filmmakers were banking on audiences to ignore character development issues by packing the emotional roller-coaster ride with thrills. They assumed correctly, of course; most people did not care.

The remainder of SM’s narrative structure is balanced on a series of clichés – clichés that have been proven to work on the popular imagination.

Notable clichés in SM:

The rags-to-riches story – it goes to the heart of the American Dream. In these dire economic times, Americans, perhaps more than anyone else, need to believe in the enduring myth of the American Dream. Does the dream feel more stable when, even, the inhabitants of Mumbai's slums share the same fantasies?

The love story involving twenty-somethings. Enough said.

The cute child element - always a sure thing. Couple cute children with an 'abuse' theme it becomes a doubly sure thing. American parents, liberal American parents, are extremely sensitive and protective souls - which makes them very susceptible to stories featuring maltreated children - (this is not a criticism of liberal American parents.) Middle-class Indian parents are equally horrified by accounts of child-abuse but the realities of living in India often force a blindness upon them – the problems are so immense, they seem insurmountable. Your average Indian, consequently, does not ponder the plight of homeless children on a daily basis. They are conditioned to turn their faces and look away; otherwise they would not be able to remain sane in the face of such shamefulness. But this susceptibility is exactly the reason why stories about hapless tortured children will find a place in American hearts. Put callously, it’s a cinch. Advertisers, charities, storytellers and begging-school Fagins in India know this well.

So, it is not too hard to understand why this rags-to-riches love story, involving abused children, made with all of the resources available to Hollywood, would be a hit in America. Everyone loves a feel-good story with a happy ending. The comparison with Juno is, therefore, unsurprising. The comparison with films of international stature, however, cannot include the likes of Juno; instead, they would have to be films like Salaam Bombay or City of God - films that are authentic in their representations, sincere about their art, and, hardly, crowd pleasers.

Much has been made of the horrible poverty that SM paraded before an international audience. This hypocritical reaction happens everytime. Satyajit Ray was castigated by educated Indians for showcasing India's poverty in Pather Panchali. So the furor in India and amongst Indians in the diaspora is not surprising. But ask yourself what have you actually seen of the slums? - probably enough to make you not want to see more (as you reflect on the child abuse scenes, the mounds of trash, the brutal police interrogation techniques, the religious riots). But did you actually see the insides of homes in the slums? did you get the impression you met some of the other people who lived there? did you get a sense of the daily grind? I understand SM is not a documentary, but the best films in this genre – like the ones I’ve named above – succeed in locating their characters within a milieu. It’s not just about making the camera run through a dirty alley, it’s also about making the camera pause long enough to explore faces, secondary relationships and subjects that live and die in a particular social-cultural environment. Bollywood has had a long history of abstracting its characters from real contexts – locales serve merely as pretty backdrops for song and dance routines and formulaic narratives. SM coopts and continues that particular entertainment tradition but camouflages it for its western audiences through beautiful cinematography and strategically positioned plot points that maximize the narrative’s shock factor.

Finally, in a film like SM, western audiences will not be bothered by incongruous representations of Indian society they know very little about - which is natural, if you think about it. Who cares? I do, obviously! For example, it is highly unlikely Alexandre Dumas is standard curriculum in the slums of Mumbai; the reference to the three musketeers, therefore, serves as an inauthentic but convenient story device for western and westernized audiences. Speaking of inauthenticities, it is, indeed, discombobulating (I've finally found a use for the word) to hear slum children speak fluent clearly-enunciated English in their conversations. I would much rather read subtitles in a film like this. But, then, SM would not have swept the Oscars if that were the case; instead it would have been nominated in the Best Foreign Film category. Besides, mainstream American audiences hate reading subtitles; methinks mainstream Indian audiences do too.

In the final analysis Slumdog Millionaire is a perfect coming together of Hollywood and Bollywood. It was bound to happen. For now Bollywood is selling, and Hollywood is buying.

Blah, blah, blah. I’m tired of this tirade already. If you enjoyed the film … fantastic! They’ll make more, I’m sure. If you disliked it, they won’t feel offended. I’m certain. Rest assured, they’ll make more, anyways.