Slumdog Millionaire

Surprisingly, I thought of writing my first blog after watching Slumdog Millionaire.Not that the film has anything to do with blogging. Not even the fact that a boy from a Bombay slum goes on to win a game show was an inspiration to become a writer of sorts.Just that I liked the film and felt like writng a few lines about it.
That it does not turn out to be my first blog is not of any consequence though.
Thanks to the net I had the opportunity of downloading the film and watching it on my computer much before it was released in the halls in Calcutta. I don't claim to be a connoisseur, but frankly I was impressed - the manner of telling the story,the back and forth movement between the past and present without losing continuity, the deft and fast editing, the excellent camera work and the brilliant sound effects kept me absorbed. The film has since got a number of Bafta awards which I think are well deserved. I am sure it will get a few oscars, at least in editng and sound.The sound and music,not so much the songs to my mind,seem to have been married to the sequences enhancing the viewing experience.
The audio-visual impact would undoubtedly be far greater and more intense if viewed on a large screen with Dolby surround system. I did miss that.
A lot has since been written about the Slumdog. Some valid criticism has also been made.Particularly about the main storyline. A friend of mine whose staple diet is cinema and good cinema, and who incidentally has been an inspiration behind my current craze of collecting and watching old classics, called the story preposterous. One cannot deny that the main story is bit of a fantasy. One wonders can it happen, can a slum boy answer all the questions that came up in the game show through his horrid experiences in life ? Were not the last answer, and also the last but one, which made him the winner pure shots in the dark? Was not the love story bit of a fairy tale ? Valid points. But did I care for these points when I watched the film ? Did I not on the other hand get engrossed by the way the story unfolded itself ? By the life of the children in the slum,the police chase,the gruesome riot, the underworld and its nefarious designs with the boys and with Latika - the girl ?Didn't it feel like hard hitting reality? Is not there a real possibility of a slum producing a Salim as well as a Jamal ? The film makes it believable through the childhood tendencies of the boys.In fact, that is the point.The film makes the whole thing
believable. That is cinema.