My final answer
6/10
In one of my favourite books about India, Rohinton Mistry’s epic ‘A Fine Balance‘, one character says “there is no such thing as an uninteresting life”. Set in part in the vast slums of Mumbai - formerly Bombay - at a critical juncture in the city’s history (the emergency powers introduced by then Prime Minister Indira Ghandi), the book deals with the enduring human spirit in India, the everyday madness that is anything but ordinary and yet lived by millions. It is a quote that could easily have been used as a tagline for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, a typically frenetic work by probably Britain’s most commercially successful director, Danny Boyle (’Shallow Grave’, ‘Trainspotting’, ‘28 Days Later’). Part-funded by Celador, the producers of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, ‘Slumdog’ is the tale of a young orphan from the slums who navigates the path to winning the ultimate jackpot on the world-famous game show. Having been accused of cheating, the film is then constructed of flashbacks from the boy’s childhood and adolescence that explain how he came to know the answers to the winning questions. A rollercoaster ride through the vast Mumbai underworld where ordinary life is extraordinary, it is a fantastic premise for a movie even if the film is finally unsatisfactory.
The problem with Slumdog Millionaire is that Danny Boyle never knows when to ease off the accelerator. The film erupts quickly into chase sequences soundtracked by urgent urban music by the likes of MIA, and sustains the tension in between with the Who wants to be a Millionaire? theme tune. There is rarely a take longer than five seconds, and the relentless bombardment of image and sound - a complaint I also levelled at Danny Boyle’s ‘Sunshine‘ - has an excessive, bullying quality to it: be very excited … all the time. The heightened intensity, applied to scenes impressionistic or prosaic, becomes frankly exhausting, particularly at the mid-point of the film, when a character pulls out a gun, and the prosaic really starts to subsume the impressionistic. The explanatory flashbacks become increasingly pulp: the gangsters and their molls finally reaching an Eastenders-quality nadir: a waste of a great premise. It’s a shame, some subtler, less sensationalist storytelling in the final third would have put Slumdog above the level of a bog-standard feelgood film. While it captures India’s chaos and vivacity, it’s everyday extraordinariness, the film becomes incrementally ordinary up to its tediously predictable finale.
10 responses so far ↓
1 andrea // Jan 22, 2009 at 8:17 pm
I’m really curious about this one. I just checked the release date in Spain and about 4 films I want to watch are out on the same week. I never knew you lived in France!
2 James Dalrymple // Jan 22, 2009 at 9:03 pm
yep, i’ve been in Grenoble for two years now …
3 David H. Schleicher // Jan 23, 2009 at 12:45 am
We see eye to eye on this one, and I am frankly tired of Boyle’s style which many other filmmakers use as well thinking it’s the “in” thing to do. Give me properly framed sustained panning long shots on celluloid any day over Boyle’s so-called “energy” and grainy digital quick-cuts.
4 James Dalrymple // Jan 23, 2009 at 9:34 am
Thanks David. I too like filmmaking requiring something resembling an attention span.
5 William Rycroft // Jan 23, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Oh dear. The Americans seem to have gone crazy for this. To be honest I thought Sunshine was pretty rubbish too. Apart from a few nice visual touches it was the usual space-can-drive-you-mental hokum.
6 William Rycroft // Jan 26, 2009 at 9:21 pm
James, I just watched it.
Oh dear.
7 Dan Morelle // Jan 27, 2009 at 12:23 am
Why didn’t they just call it ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire - the movie’?
8 James Dalrymple // Jan 27, 2009 at 7:46 am
Well, it hasn’t warmed up on me much since I saw it but it seems to be one of those films you either love or hate.
Dan, regarding ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire - the movie’ - what I found strange is that Celador agreed to having the presenter in the movie trying to trick the protagonist and ultimately handing him over to the police. But I guess you’re right, it doesn’t alter the basic conceit that this game show is a changer of lives, a fulfiller of dreams … not bad publicity really.
9 Paul // Feb 27, 2009 at 2:01 am
I thought it was an amazing film as did Mr Rogers. We watched it recently in Sydney. If you want an average film watch ‘Benjamin Button’ Get realistic and stop being over critical.
10 James Dalrymple // Feb 27, 2009 at 9:40 am
Hi Paul,
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘get realistic’. Maybe I am ‘over critical’ but if I really don’t like something - especially a film as critically acclaimed as Slumdog - I try to explain why. I’m not just dismissing the film, I feel I’ve given fairly good reasons why it doesn’t engage me.
I refer you to David Denby’s review in The New Yorker, which puts much more succinctly what I was trying to say about the MTV style of filmmaking: “Boyle has created what looks like a jumpy, hyper-edited commercial for poverty. he uses the squalor and violence touristically, as an aspect of the fabulous”.
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