The movie has already bagged 4 golden globe trophies & expectations are high to repeat the same history in coming Oscars. More than anyone else I’m happy to see the smiling face of British Director Danny Boyle.He is in his mid 60’s & he always remains an underdog low budget filmmaker in Hollywood for years & this is his moment. It’s his belief in the script (a novel named ‘Q & A’ written by Vikas Swarup, which even a few Indians have read so far) & his execution as a director which made the film a history. His best decision as a director is casting an assistant Indian co-director Loveleen Tondon & gave her full liberty of casting. And Loveleen has done brilliant casting to cater the world audience. Especially those slum children including child Jamaal. Apart of sound direction, the movie also scores points in screenplay & gripping editing. Not for a single minute I felt bore in the film.The movie is a moving confession story of a Mumbai slum dweller boy named Jamaal who in the verge of winning a reality quiz show interrogated by the suspicious cops. How Jamaal knows the answers of all questions, how he won 20 million bucks & more importantly his lost love with a platform like this is thing to watch & cherish.
The movie is totally Indian in look & partly in Hindi but it’s the treatment of balancing fantasy of winning money with stark reality of slum life made it uplifting tale to admire. And it’s this balance of film which has touched the right chords of abroad audience.
Our ‘Madras Mozart’ A R Rahman got world recognition on central stage winning golden globe trophy representing 1st ever Indian who won it & it’s definitely moment of him too. But the score he gave in the film isn’t his best one. All the Indian Rahman fans who have listened his music for years may feel the background score of the film a very normal score compared to his gr8 compositions & themes of last 18 years.
Talking about the performances its- Dev Patel & Freida Pinto steals the show with their promising debut performances. Rest of the Bollywood cast- Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Mahesh Manjrekar or Shaurabh Shukla maintained the nuanced performances assigned to them. But Anil has done exceptionally well with his cheer up anchor of the show with his trademark style. Anil is going to do a thrilling 2nd film with Danny Boyle in lead role. Hope Boyle can exploit well this genius screen legend of Bollywood.
Ratings- 8.5/10
4 comments:
nice review, i agree with u that it's not Rahman's best BG score. but this is one movie which no one who have seen it so far have denied that it's a good movie. the performances were good too, especially the child Jamal. the visuals are good too. overall a must watch for any cinema lover.
Certainly MUST watch movie
u said every thing abt the movie,and i agree with u. i thoroughly liked the movie. good screenplay, good script, good cinematography....etc etc. but, somehow i dont feel happy with the movie. before saying anything, lemme ask you, would u have liked "a city of god", which depicts the story of India? city of god made on India? also. if ever given a chance, would u like to visit city of god....after watching that movie. i wont !
i think, danny boyle has given us our "city of god" in form of slumdog. in my view, "he came , he ridiculed, he concurred!!".
i dont wanna be a cry baby,neither i am a follower of vishwa hindu parishad or shivsena......., as the things it has shown is perfectly true. india has got all those drawbacks. cheating, stealing, poverty, beggars, less education...u name it !! but, is it okay to show all these things so nakedly,and that too by a foreigner? (i remember, in class 9 we had a story "Beneras" by some mr. Fisher, there he raped our culture in a logical way. i hated that story. the story which ridiculed our society, religion, people and culture was in our syllabus. will any western country allow a story to publish which ridicules its culture, that too in school syllabus.). i dont say that, ban this movie,bcz i love art and specially movies, but what will its effect be on our tourism.
also, make my confusion clear, what this movie be called? a bollywood, a hollywood, in collaboration with bollywood? bcz TOI has proudly written and i quote "can slumdog will fulfill india's oscar dream!!". only money, director and the technicians are from west, except that, every thing is indigenous. if thats called an indian movie, then long ago, "gandhi" fulfilled our dream, isnt it?
now, movie has got plenty of factual errors. bhagwan ram is never depicted to hold bow and arrow in his right hand. (i searched google, and went to a temple.). being a right handed (??), its obvious that he has to keep his bow in left hand. right hand gives "ashirwad".
anil kapur, in first few minutes, when he is having introduction with jamal, he says- "so what does 'A' assistant phone basher do exactly??". (have i heard it wrong?? subtitles says "an assistant"). if its a mistake, then how come a british do such mistake, and if its delibrate, then what does danny wants to show? we indians dont know good english? its said that now, an indian speaks better english than an english man. is it another piece of ridicule?
the song "darshan do ghanshyam" is not written by surdas (the blind poet!!). imdb and google itself says that.
also some bashing for imdb. it says that bachchan did a guest appearence. but its not bachchan, its his duplicate, which also could be seen when he gives autograph. anyone who has followed KBC closely will know that his hand is pretty scarred and ugly, as seen in the ""cheque sighning" shots. also imdb says that there is no waiting contestants shown on the set of the game show, in the movie, which is wrong.they can easily be seen in the movie.
overall, i loved the movie. anil kapoor is brilliant here. and kids are just awesome. dnt know whether they will get any recognition. subtitles are shown in an innoative way. (hav u seen the music video of 'bulla di jana' by rabbi shergill? there is a similaruty in subtitles!!) here is a movie which doesnt shy away from "gaali". its a part of our daily life, so why should we shy away form them, specially when we are talking about serious cinema! anyway...effort is appreciable.
Abhi my friend u r slightly over reacting…I know it hurts n it hurts my sensibilities too as an Indian viewer…The film resembles lot similar like an Indian version of ‘City of God’…Danny Boyle is a foreign film maker & so he can’t understand our sensibilities as fellow Indians…One of my teacher told me a brilliant line once that History is written by conquerors & not by conquered ones…Boyle is angrez film maker but don’t u think its ugliness which we r hiding behind all India shining slogans, Bollywood entertainers of yash-johar camp, foreign direct investment ga ga crap by politicians & economists & media…how the hell they turned their faces off with this ugly reality that still we have the biggest slum ghettos in entire Asia & majority of our population living below poverty line… Besides the movie is screen adaptation of the book written by an Indian…One can’t show slum glamorously when dealing with subject like this!!!! It’s authentic portrayal of Indian reality…the problem with us is that we are double standard janta…we admire ‘Gandhi’ won Oscar but not when ugly reality of Indian poverty portrayed by either Satyajit Ray or this time ‘Danny Boyle’…
I would strongly suggest you to read extremely well researched book journalistic book written by P Sainath named ‘Everybody loves a great draught’. Its award wining book & while reading it made me cry at heart….For a thinking Indian like u it’s compulsory reading…
I must appreciate your detailing & researched analysis about factual details & errors of the film..very good…but lemme tell u frankly Danny Boyle can’t tarnish either Indian image or Indian tourism with just a single film( so what if film won Golden Globe or will win Oscar)…Because above all it’s a film yaar…Let me tell you why, few weeks ago one of my lecturer buddy went to watch “Rabne…” with a Canadian visiting lecturer simply because she wanted to watch a Bollywood cinema while being in India…She enjoyed movie better than my friend. He asked that what he liked in movie so much? Direction, acting, story???? And she replied that “Indian movie represents life in colors...You have dance, song, positive ending, comedy, tragedy everything in one…what else one can expect from life…We exploits technology in our film making but you touched the sensibilities….” She also purchased a pirated DVD when she left India to cherish the film in memory…Don’t you think many people think this way…I can still say more on this but I don’t want to waste more words for thinking viewer like you…Samajdar ko ishara kafi hota hai!!! Wat u say!!!
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