timtom's Movie Review of Slumdog Millionaire

Slum: Anything But A Dog
timtom - wrote on 01/19/09

The words 'masterful', 'powerful' and 'mind-blowing' understate this extraordinary movie. Starting in no particular order - Concept: taking a tacky popular TV quiz show - "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" - and using the India version as the vehicle in which to tell the story via flashback was ingenious and 'masterful' in the way it was pulled off. The story played second to the way it was depicted. Riveting scenes of poverty, brutality and anarchy in India will stay with the viewer long after viewed. In one scene the main character, Jamal, as a child, shows his unimaginable determination by choosing to literally immerse his entire body in human defecation in order to escape from an outhouse solely because he had a short window in which to obtain a local celebrity's autograph. Cinematography: I believe it was Stephen Soderbergh (not connected with this film) who first used the handheld camera to give the audience an increased feeling of reality. Up-close and jerky motions of a handheld camera, if done right, does accomplish this. In Slumdog the technique is raised to a new level - there were moments made so stark, real and close-up I felt I was on the other side of the screen standing side by side with the characters. This technique, coupled with the film's vivid squalid brutality, makes a truly memorable cinematic experience. I was blown away with the scenes depicting the level of poverty. Poverty in America does not come close. Story: Slumdog is a love story which is integral and very touching but to pass the film off simply as a love story is like saying Michelangelo painted pictures on ceilings - accurate but hardly informative. The host of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" is an obnoxious counterpart of Regis Philbin. Unlike sincere Regis, this guy is a crooked, disingenuous, self-aggrandizing, self-promoting carnival barker type. I loved hating this guy each time he'd shout "Who wants to be a 'millenare' ?". Main character Jamal, having encountered innumerable near death experiences from infancy to early adulthood (in addition to witnessing his mother's brutal death) winds up on the Indian quiz show with an exuberant live audience cheering him on. He displays an uncanny ability to accurately answer questions that net him millions of rupees. But the game is not over. During a break officials shuffle Jamal into a back room and torture him to reveal how he cheated to get the answers. I do not use the word 'torture' lightly - it was life-threatening, excruciatingly painful torture - we're talking, among other things, passing electrical current through his body. Alas, Jamal was not cheating - he really knew the answers. Thus, the clever sequence of flashbacks showing how Jamal's extraordinary life experiences provided him with the answers. The scene soon after switches to real-time and you'll have to see the rest for yourself. One of the most extraordinary movies I've ever seen...and that's my final answer.