There would be little point in using a space such as this to review a film that is being touted on the sides of buses, were it not for the overwhelming desire to correct the impression that is given on the sides of those buses. This is not a ‘feel-good’ movie!
This is not to say that the film does not have a happy ending. It has ‘a’ happy ending, but by the time that ending occurs, the script has spun a series of tales that do not have happy endings.
The plot of the film is common property by now. Jamal, a ‘chai-wallah’ at a call centre in Mumbai is so successful on ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ that the host of the show gets him taken in by the police for cheating. The police torture him in, actually, some of the least harrowing scenes in the film. This torture is laconically supervised by the local police chief, played by the wonderful Irrfan Khan from Kapadia’s beautiful The Warrior. And to this police chief, Jamal recounts the events of his life that have allowed him to give the right answers on TV.
Jamal has been born and raised in the slums of Mumbai, his mother killed in sectarian violence and then he and his brother Salim taken into a ‘orphanage’ run by vile Maman. It is at the orphanage that the most harrowing of the scenes in the film occurs. It is in the orphanage, as well, that he meets Latika who becomes the love of his life and the quest for whom drives Jamal onto ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’. Salim, however, descends deeper into the violence that his upbringing and the orphanage have driven him to.
This is a deeply engrossing film that is quite as dark as Boyle’s Shallow Grave and 28 Days Later. Boyle’s skill in this film is to mix that profound darkness with a lightness of touch and a life affirming quality that engages you with the darkness, but with the constancy of hope. The performances are wonderful, held in the centre by the mesmerising Dev Patel as Jamal; on the set of the game show, he is all innocent wonderment, a rabbit caught in the headlights of what he has brought on himself, and also determined in his quest for Latika. Anil Kapoor, as Prem the patronizing game show host, whose own background in the slums leads him to scheme Jamal’s downfall, makes Chris Tarrant seem like a candidate for canonization. And Frieda Pinto as the deeply abused Latika brings out a yearning quality in Latika, although the chemistry between her and Jamal doesn’t seem entirely convincing. The performances of the child actors are brilliant, and the cinematography is terrific, beginning with little Jamal and Salim being chased through the slums by the police for the ‘crime’ of playing cricket on the airport out-field.
The film portrays Mumbai as a place in which the forces of late-capitalism seem to be levering the poor and rich even further apart then before, and quite rightly raises questions that it doesn’t answer. Crowds gather around the available TV sets to watch the climax of the show, and the climax to Salim’s criminality occurs at the same time. Thus the ‘feel-good’ quality that there might be in the film is undermined by its context of overwhelming oppression.
However, whatever you do, don’t leave before the final credits.