Slumdog Millionaire | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: When you finish this Wyatt review, please spend a few moments using our Movie Database, and feel welcome to return. Nearly everything important to movies, plus great images are there.

    Consequently, over the next many weeks, possibly months, we will endeavor to remedy this mild injustice by publishing these reviews, in our current improved format, for your edification. Here below is our twenty-six in a series of these older articles of interest by our well read friend, Wyatt Sanderman Day.

    
Finally... India finds its own Rocky Balboa

    Sylvestor Stallone's "Rocky," the low budget Cinderella story released in 1976, knows few challengers in the rags to respectability motif. It was a tale told simply, honestly and with great conviction. It is a classic.

    "Slumdog Millionaire," is a more complex story, yet like "Rocky," it is an Hindi yarn of a young Indian boy struggling to survive, while endeavoring to salvage what grace he can scavenge, like so many crumbs from the meager table of the proletariat.

    Like the boxer Rocky, street smart Jamal Malik (the slumdog), portrayed by 17 year old, newcomer Dev Patel, must use the qualities that he possesses in abundance to survive. For Rocky Balboa, it was his extreme toughness. For Jamal, it the immediate recall of his street honed, deep cognitive powers. The similar quality that they both keep is their abundant good hearts, full of an innate love for others. It is the quality that makes "Rocky" much more than a boxing story, and "Slumdog" much more than a Cinderella story, in that both films collectively control the members of the audience, who can identify with these heroes.


    The story of "Slumdog Millionaire" begins in Bombay more than 25 years ago, when the slums were a grim reality. After Jamal, played competently by younger actors, and brother, Salim, suffer the death of their young mother from an organized Muslim attack against the poor, defenseless Hindu's living in their slum. From that point on, the brothers are forced to live on their own, and by their wits, they are able to survive the cruel streets of Bombay.
This film did well exhibit the abject poverty of India as a backdrop to this film: Above. It was a poverty, so pervasive, that was so interwoven in so many lives that fairy tell was as much about survival as it was a fantastic love story. Here, the young Jamal scrambles through the mud to capture an autograph: Below.
    Another casualty of the vicious Muslim attack is a young girl, Latika, which Jamal befriends with empathy and kindness. The three orphaned children face a series of perilous conflicts until they are separated in an escape from the evil Maman, portrayed by Ankur Vikal, who turns lost children into slaves. The loss of Latika becomes the focus of Jamal's life, and he thinks of "every waking moment." At this point, "Slumdog Millionaire" is no longer just a tale of orphaned children against the backdrop of profound poverty, but a love story, that is as pure as any fairy tale.
Latika suffered incredibly through her early years of the human experience, just as Jamal did, which served to accentuate the fairy motif: Above. Through all her adversity, Latika still grew into a beautiful young woman, ably portrayed by Freida Pinto, which help make the fairy tale component so riveting: Below.
Still don't buy into the truism that every great fairy tale has a beautiful woman at its core? Freida Pinto as the post adolescent Latika: Below.
    As the story of the brothers evolve from victims within the cruel Maman's slave ring to pre adolescents, growing stronger in the ways of the world of living on the streets of India, the story of Latika runs in a concurrent channel. Latika, growing more beautiful with each day and perfectly cast with first time actress Frieda Pinto, survives to a kept life of some sustenance with gangsters. She is a modern day Sleeping Beauty, awake, but emotionally unconscious.

    Factor in the popular television program, "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," as a dramatic vehicle and you have a simmering soup of dramatic conflict that pleads for resolution. The dramatic tension of this element in the story, as well as the tension between Jamal and the show's host is palpable. It is at this point Director Danny Boyle and Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy earn their keep by keeping this story believable, while powering it to a conclusion that befit's the fairytale genre.
Indian actor Dev Patel, as the older Jamal, exhibits the stoic essence of the noble hero of this fairy tale, and eventually becomes the "Slumdog Millionaire."