The big question

Anil Kapoor, right, fires a question at Dev Patel in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’.

LEKHA J SHANKAR

Special to The Nation

 It's an unprecedented event: an "Asian" film sweeping the world's top awards, from the Golden Globes to the Screenwriters Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America to the London Film Critics Circle and the BAFTAs.

 "Slumdog Millionaire" has also struck gold at every festival it's been entered for, from Telluride, Colorado to Toronto and just recently Rotterdam.

Tomorrow brings the ultimate test for this feel-good story of a slum-boy who hits the famous game show's jackpot - will it win the best-film Oscar?

 But while the rest of us wait for the answer, a different question is raging in India where the film was made: does "Slumdog" have an authentic Indian pedigree?

 Its Indian critics nod to the frenzy of praise it has excited abroad, then point to the frenzy of criticism at home. The criticism centres on two questions: how can a white-collar diplomat living in South Africa (Vikas Swarup) know enough to write a story based on India's blackest slums? And how can a well-known film-maker based in Britain (Danny Boyle) capture the grime and gore of Mumbai's under-belly?

 Spoiler alert

 The story of the poor boy who becomes rich, the innocent girl who falls from grace, the bad brother versus the good brother, the police and the mafia -- none of this is new to Indian cinema.

 In fact, the film is full of "Indian" cliches. The slum-kid doused in human excrement, the beggar's eyes  gouged out, Hindu militants killing an innocent Muslim -- every one of these scenes has been played out umpteen times in the 1000-odd movies that India produces every year. And the Bollywood dance number in the final scene is the ultimate spoof!

 But that is all part of the alchemy of this movie.

 Sceptical Indians can squirm and squeal as they watch, but none of them can deny that this story captures Mumbai in all its gruesome glory.

 The cliches in the film happen to be true for Mumbai  - in no other Indian city are the two sides of the chasm between slums and sky-scrapers, filthy poor and filthy rich so close   Mumbai is famous for being home to the world's biggest film industry - Bollywood, but also for housing the world's largest slum -- Dharavai.

The film may have been conceived by a British director, shot with a British crew, edited in Britain, but "Slumdog" is 100 per cent Indian. Or to be precise, 100 per cent Mumbai.

Simon Beaufoy's screenplay, Anthony Dod Mantle's sweeping cinematography, AR Rahman's haunting music are just part of the all-enveloping magic.

What gives "Slumdog" the edge over films like Mira Nair's "Salaam Bombay", Fernando Merelles' "City of God" and Roland Joffe's "City of Joy" - all of which it has been compared too -- is its special quality of comedy and irony, keeping entertainment levels high through even the darkest parts of the film.

 That's why it has moved audiences and won awards wherever it has played in the world.

One of the first critics of the film in India was superstar Amitabh Bachchan, who said it only acquired global fame because it was made by a Westerner.

 In a roundabout way he's right -- no Indian director could have conceived the film in the way Danny Boyle did.

His "multidimensional" style cuts across different times, places, memories and actions to take the viewer on a dizzying roller-coaster ride that only ends when the game show does.

 In one of his first interviews, Boyle called it a multi-genre film, " urban myth, horror tale, fable, comedy, melodrama, love-story".

 Why? "Because Mumbai is inclusive and exclusive -- it encompasses everything!"

 The director had never been to India before the filming, but got such a concentrated dose when he arrived in Mumbai that he never left the city. Boyle channelled its highs and lows, the seesawing from excitement and exaltation to frustration and desperation, through the psyche of a slum-boy who hits the jackpot.

 Already heated, the debate in India is boiling over when it comes to the question of whether the film's title is insulting. The point its critics miss is that the title's contradicting words are a reflection of the contradictions in multidimensional Mumbai (or India, for that matter).

 "Slumdog" is an "Indian" film in every sense of the word, without being "slum-porn" or  "poverty-rich".

 It also makes the grade as a Bollywood movie.

  Bollywood concentrates on one theme, in a myriad different forms and styles - Love. The age-old formula of boy meets girl, boy loses girl then is finally reunited, is what "Slumdog" is all about.

 When all the debates about social, political and religious realism die down, the film is nothing but a straightforward love story. A boy tries every trick in the book, including a game show, to find the love of his life.

 These are the ingredients that raise Boyle's Bollywood tale to a level no Mumbai film has reached before.

 In many ways, the story of "Slumdog" is the story of Indian cinema: a spectacular canvas that shows the whole of life, gathering adulation and prizes along the way. And yet the final prize still remains to be won:

the whole world will be watching to see if the "Indian film" hits the Oscar jackpot tomorrow.