SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
10:00pm, Friday, Culbreth Theatre
Director: Danny Boyle
Writer: Simon Beaufoy
Cinematographer: Anthony Dod Mantle
Cast: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Anil Kapoor
Running Time: 120 minutes
Relocating from the Kubrickian spacescapes of last year’s Sunshine to the far less glamorous slums of Mumbai, India, British director Danny Boyle’s newest feature Slumdog Millionaire sees him refine his focus from the fate of mankind en masse to that of a solitary Indian orphan. Boyle turns his eye to the slums of Mumbai, examining them without ever denigrating, and in the process crafts a story of enormous hope which just may be his best feature to date.
Dev Patel stars as Jamal, a young man who, using the knowledge of a life’s education in the school of hard knocks, strikes it big on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, and is then subsequently arrested as a fraud. The film cuts between Jamal’s television appearance, his interrogation at the hands of Indian police who refuse to believe he didn’t cheat his way to a win on the show and, most crucially, scenes from his youth on the streets. Boyle presents a fully realized vision of slum life; alongside the unspeakable tragedies which occur daily are the genuine bonds of friendship and moments of humor which exist among those who must cope with the life they’ve been dealt.
Boyle reunites here with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (28 Days Later), whose knack for extracting beauty from the most sparse settings– gained no doubt from his work with the Dogme 95 movement – renders the slums of Mumbai, in all their endless terror and difficulty, a place of comparably endless vibrancy and beauty.
In finding the hope in this brutally honest evaluation of poverty, Boyle creates one of the most striking features ever made on the topic. And by the time the film reaches its rapturously joyful closing sequence, it feels as though Boyle, through his faith in humanity to persevere, has truly earned it. If the crowd reactions from Telluride and Toronto are any indication, audiences will be cheering everywhere when the film is released this fall.
