The curious case of Slumdog Millionaire
Perspective
Samir Roy
Issue date: 5/19/09 Section: Opinion
If we take this film seriously, then one would have to also assume some horrible untruths. The movie mangles hope by supplanting achievable goals with fantasy. It validates clinging to these wish-fulfillment fantasies as acceptable models for living.
The film's perspective seems more in tune with the American tourist couple, viewed in the film's context with great condescension, who offer money to the child Jamal as an answer to the beating he receives from the cabbie he has fleeced. "This is how we do things in America," they say. Judging from the film, this is symptomatic of Boyle's perspective.. It turns out that Boyle and Co.'s money answereth all prayers approach had real-life repercussions that in their ignorance they failed to prepare for.
Everyone who loved the film was surprised, for instance, that people who live in slums do not like being referred to as dogs, inspiring a CNN story with interviews from slum-dwellers objecting to the film's title.
The fame bestowed on these children, particularly Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, as a direct result of the filmmakers' struggle for authenticity created even greater problems. Other slum-dwellers started fights with the stars' families, apparently jealous that filmmakers did not deem them worthy of fat trust accounts and new houses.
Ali is now embroiled in a custody battle between the stepmother who raised her and Rubina's biological mother. This started a violent physical altercation between the women, captured on video, that made the news along with disputing reports that Rubina's father, Rafiq Qureshi, tried to sell her or give her up for adoption.
Others saw Ismail's father slap his son for refusing an interview on their way back from their trip to the Oscars, for which the child had to excuse his father's abuse in an interview stating that he had been "naughty." (His father also told the press "I feel sorry now.")
Assuming that no one would care to check, producers paid the child stars, plucked directly from the slums (for the sake of "authenticity"), a mere pittance for almost a year's worth of work, a fact which several journalists dug up soon after the film received a boatload of Academy Awards and over $100,000,000 at the box office. Then Boyle announced, according to a March 10 Time magazine piece by New Delhi journalist Nilanjana Bhowmick, that he was setting up a trust to pay for the children's education until they reach 18, giving them new homes, and promising to keep up with them, once everyone in the world knew the amount of their paychecks.
The film's perspective seems more in tune with the American tourist couple, viewed in the film's context with great condescension, who offer money to the child Jamal as an answer to the beating he receives from the cabbie he has fleeced. "This is how we do things in America," they say. Judging from the film, this is symptomatic of Boyle's perspective.. It turns out that Boyle and Co.'s money answereth all prayers approach had real-life repercussions that in their ignorance they failed to prepare for.
Everyone who loved the film was surprised, for instance, that people who live in slums do not like being referred to as dogs, inspiring a CNN story with interviews from slum-dwellers objecting to the film's title.
The fame bestowed on these children, particularly Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, as a direct result of the filmmakers' struggle for authenticity created even greater problems. Other slum-dwellers started fights with the stars' families, apparently jealous that filmmakers did not deem them worthy of fat trust accounts and new houses.
Ali is now embroiled in a custody battle between the stepmother who raised her and Rubina's biological mother. This started a violent physical altercation between the women, captured on video, that made the news along with disputing reports that Rubina's father, Rafiq Qureshi, tried to sell her or give her up for adoption.
Others saw Ismail's father slap his son for refusing an interview on their way back from their trip to the Oscars, for which the child had to excuse his father's abuse in an interview stating that he had been "naughty." (His father also told the press "I feel sorry now.")
Assuming that no one would care to check, producers paid the child stars, plucked directly from the slums (for the sake of "authenticity"), a mere pittance for almost a year's worth of work, a fact which several journalists dug up soon after the film received a boatload of Academy Awards and over $100,000,000 at the box office. Then Boyle announced, according to a March 10 Time magazine piece by New Delhi journalist Nilanjana Bhowmick, that he was setting up a trust to pay for the children's education until they reach 18, giving them new homes, and promising to keep up with them, once everyone in the world knew the amount of their paychecks.
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