Slumdog Millionaire

While I appreciated hearing Maya Chaudhari’s comments regarding Slumdog Millionaire, I don’t think others should be swayed by her impression of the film.

I have seen many Bollywood films, and I am a fan of the genre. I have friends and family who have visited/lived in India, and so on. Until I saw Slumdog Millionaire, I had never seen nor heard such a powerful representation of urban India.

It is a major motion picture, so I in no way take the film as past or present fact, but the idea that Ms. Chaudhari was so affected by it’s symbolism and that she knew from experience that some of the stories were based in reality, only reaffirms my belief that this is a really good film.

Indians, with their rich cinematic culture, should know as well as any people that cinema requires a suspension of disbelief, and that both the realism and fantasy of this spectacular film create only that – a film – not a factual representation.

This reminds me of the “Man vs. Wild” press from last year, where the host Bear Grylls was chided for his staying in hotels during production of a survival television program. If people are surprised or offended by misrepresentations in any media, they need to reassess how they personally process new information and their ways of learning about our wonderful world.

Thanks!

Your interview with Maya Chaudhari regarding the opening of Slumdog Millionaire in India left me with mixed feelings. If her opinions were to be understood simply as the opinions of an Indian/American expat, OK, no problem. If, on the other hand, we are to take her opinions as those of an Indian film critic, I am angry. Here’s why: her criticism of the film seems to be based on the fact that it presents the best and worst aspects of life in Mumbai, warts and all, in a fashion that, in her estimation, slanders the country of India with the truth of Mumbai’s poverty and gang underworld. The fact that she personally doesn’t want to watch a movie about Mumbai’s problems is, of course, inarguable, but she seems to be even more concerned that “This is all that Americans will know about India”.
Oh, please! “All that Americans will know about India”? For Pete’s sake, starting with Rudyard Kipling, then the Flashman series, continuing into the 20th century with Satyajit Ray’s films of the 1950s and 60s, The Beatles/Ravi Shankar era,and, finally, with the recent healthy infusion of Indian (mostly female) writers into the bestseller lists of the US and the UK, I really believe that the Americans who would choose to see Slumdog are the Americans who can, most assuredly, handle the truth about India. The audience for the film in this country is one to whom the name “Jhumpa Lahiri” is not unfamiliar, and for whom the Dickensian rags-to-riches plot of Slumdog Millionaire, will be understood as simply that: the plot of a film that owes something to “David Copperfield” and “Great Expectations”. But which, in the end, stands alone as a well-done film with a positive story. To steal from Vikram Chandra, in “Sacred Games”, the American audience for this film is not composed of ignorant villagers from Utar Pradesh, as Ms. Chaudhari seems to think.

I was born and brought up in India. I spent most of my life in Bangalore and Coimbatore (cities in south India) before I moved to the US in 2007.

I agree with the listener’s’ comments that others should not be swayed by Maya Chaudhari’s impression and not wanting to watch the movie was her personal choice.

However one should keep in mind that India is too big and diverse a country for any one to represent or misrepresent it in a 90 minute movie. If one were to create a 300 part series to truly represent India, it would be next to impossible.

So leaving India out of this discussion, this is a really good movie compared to some of the movies produced in Bollywood.

A.R.Rahman is truly a maestro and deserves the Golden Globe Awards. But was Slumdog Millionaire is best work? No way!

Back home, I have seen a lot of hew and cry when some of the favorite Indian movies do not make it to the international awards. I am very happy to see an “Indian” movie hit the charts internationally.