Slumdog Millionaire...
maaseru and I went today to see Slumdog Millionaire. We weren't the only people who felt like a movie at Christmas: the theatre was full.
The movie is Oliver Twist set in Mumbai. The frame story is of Jamal's brutal interrogation by the police: he's a contestant on a game show, and winning piles of money. Because he's a kid from the slum, they think he must be cheating somehow. But he isn't. Question by question, he tells them the story of how he knows each other answers to each of the questions, covering his background as a homeless orphan with his brother Salim and their friend Latika. The story builds on itself rather beautifully, and events gain meaning as we see how they build together. The feel-good ending is such a payoff it sort of makes up for all the grim suffering, torture, and brutality Jamal lives through.
What I most loved was Jamal's honesty. Terrible things happen to Jamal, but he keeps his sense of honour. Even when given a clear chance to cheat on the quiz show, to win his twenty million rupees1, we know he won't do it. It's great to have such faith in a hero.
Did I enjoy it? On the whole, yes, though much of it was a little too grim and some of it was a little too long. The happy ending was a great relief, but even better was the way things fit together - the way Jamal's last quiz question had so much significance for his past and future.
Jamal's job at a computer call agency is to deliver tea to the people working there. Several times they make reference to his job as chai-wallah - which in English they call 'tea-boy'. Of course this made me think of Ianto Jones, and smile.
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1 I looked it up, afterwards: twenty million rupees is about $514,000 Cdn.