"From Rags to Riches, It is Your Destiny"

In a fairytale rise from the streets of India to atop a potential gold mine, Hollywood is injected with flairs of Bollywood in a clash of crime, drama and romance that blurs cultural lines in Slumdog Millionaire. Regardless of heritage or social status, all audiences can relate to this tale of redemption, complete with love, loss, despair and, above all, unflinching hope.

What if you were punished for doing everything right? This is the fate of Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), an Indian teen from the slums of Mumbai, who is one question away from taking home the 20 million rupees grand prize on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? The police, however, arrest him under suspicion of cheating–how else could a tea server in a call center with no education advance farther than any doctor or lawyer? While the police are trying to torture the truth out of him, Jamal takes the audience back through his past with a series of flashbacks to show how he knew the answer to every single question. From his journey as an orphan relying on his somewhat untrustworthy older brother Salim (Madhur Mittal) to close encounters with local gangs and his first experience with love and heartbreak with a fellow orphan Latika (Freida Pinto), it becomes clear that it is fate that has landed Jamal in the hot seat, and this was all meant to be.

Slumdog is a turn to the (somewhat) lighter side for director Danny Boyle–the game show scenes in this non-linear plot bring a slight reprieve to the horrifying events of Jamal’s past. Mr. Boyle, most famous for his 1996 portrayal of heroin addicts in Trainspotting and for 2002’s science fiction horror hit, 28 Days Later, draws on his past work for influence. A revolting toilet scene from Trainspotting reappears, and gruesome acts committed by the gang leaders on the young orphans will remind audiences of the horror from 28 Days Later. The motif of extreme suffering exists across all three films, but where the other two leave doubts about the fate of the main characters, Slumdog ties up nicely and leaves the audience satisfied with the final scene.

From the very beginning of the film, the stakes are sky high. In the opening scene, a close up of Jamal against a red-and-orange hued background brings the audience in tight to the action. A puff of smoke is followed by a shockingly intense slap, and a gruff voice demands for a name before the screen cuts to black. The rest of the movie continues with this full-throttle intensity reminiscent of Jan de Bont’s 1994 action thriller Speed. You will not be able to tear your eyes away from the screen.

All the technical aspects of the film weave together to enhance the narrative’s meaning. Mr. Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle do a fantastic job of giving the audience a front row seat for all of the action with the way the camera frames each scene. In the beginning, right after the close-up-and-slap sequence, the camera alternates between Jamal and his interrogator to capture the interrogation in the clammy cramped police station. The camera shoots Jamal upside down and to an angle, giving the viewers a sense of his disorientation. Whenever there is a long take of a chase scene through the unpaved city streets (which happens frequently as young Jamal and Salim are constantly on the run), the camera bounces and shakes along with the running boys, making it seem as if the audience is running through the streets with them. All of the flashbacks open up with wide establishing shots to show the full layout of the area. The first flashback starts at street level and then keeps pulling further and further away to show just how far the slums reverberate from the city. The shots of the piles of rotting trash and dusty debris that populate the slums show rather than tell how rough Jamal had it growing up, and this is repeated once again when the mothers and children were doing their wash in the dirty river. The shots are so realistic you can almost smell the decaying filth the boys are forced to live in. By bringing the audience so close that they can feel the dirt and sweat sticking to the characters, Mr. Mantle brings the audience inside the film and provides the tools for the viewers to completely empathize with Jamal’s plight and live vicariously through him.

As with the camera, the color design compliments and strengthens the narrative’s main points. The color scheme of the costumes and sets reflect the state of urban India. Throughout most of the movie, all clothing, people, and places have muted tones, like they are covered with a layer of kicked-up street dust. What should be vibrant red and blue Sarees come off as pallid. Mr. Boyle even subdues the subtitles, replacing the typical harsh, white typecast found at the bottom of the screen with camouflaged words set against background colors displayed in a variety of locations on-screen that help integrate them into the action instead of distracting from it. In the film’s final scene, the switch to light vibrant colors gives a perfect contrast to the events of the past.

The list of strong elements in the film goes on and on. The Oscar-nominated music falls right into place, offering a great mix of mainstream American and traditional Indian. Sound Designer and Editor Glenn Freemantle hits each note perfectly, and the original Indian music composed by A.R. Rahman keeps the film true to its roots. The small details such as the Polaroid camera and the Coca-Cola bottles that fascinate the young children are the icing on the cake that speaks volumes about the quality of life. Every single element, thematic and technical, reaches out to each demographic in attempts to draw the entire audience into this fairytale story that reminds us that dreams can, in fact, come true.