slumdog squarepants
I feel a little odd writing this particular post, because I don't know how often (or if ever) my parents google me or read this, and of all the sacrilegious and uncouth things I've said on here, I've never bashed a movie my mother recommended before. Maybe "bash" is an awfully strong word for it. Oh, hell, maybe it's exactly the right word for it.
And so:
Really?
I mean, really?
At the beginning of Slumdog Millionaire, we are presented with a multiple choice question, not unlike you would be if you were on the game show the film is built around:
How did Jamal Malik, an uneducated man from the slums of India, become a winner on the biggest game show in India?
Let me translate. What that means, in other words, is there are four possibilities:
Suffice it to say I'm only lingering on this point because, as you go, it becomes clear almost immediately that Jamal is no genius. He's uneducated, not even self-educated, and that's fine, but the odds of him simply knowing all of this shit is thrown out within ten minutes of flashbacks. Just as quickly you can eliminate the idea that Jamal is a cheat, as even after being arrested and tortured with electrocution to find out why he was able to beat the system, the same cops who beat him up have to admit that he is if anything too honest. This leaves us two options: random chance or predetermination.
Of course, I was waiting throughout for some kind of insane, implausible reveal that the questions weren't just coincidentally about his life but were in fact staged questions, that someone within the game show or even higher had intervened in his favor. That's a bit of the paranoid cynic's response to the question of destiny, I guess (and also the kind of thing someone who's been engrossed in Lost and Battlestar Galactica might expect), and though they toyed with it as a fake-out, that was also not the case. So the unspoken fifth option, that someone else was cheating for him, was also overruled.
But again, this leaves only two possibilities: either Jamal is just so lucky to have lived through twelve or so precise experiences that give him just the answers to the twelve or so precise questions he is asked on a game show, or Jamal's story works out in the end because that's how it was written, by the writers who wrote it. (Stepping outside the narrative for just a moment, I'd like to pose the following: what the hell is the difference between these two options? Really, we're already down to the one.) So, of course, in the end, the only reason he knew anything, got the money, caused so much trouble, is because that's how the story was written. It happened that way because that's what the script said. This is reinforced, in case you weren't clear, when the text reappears just before the credits, answering the question posed at the beginning:
The problem with stories hinging so dramatically and explicitly on destiny is, it's a goddamned story. YOU WROTE IT. YOU ADAPTED IT FROM SOMEONE ELSE WHO ALSO WROTE IT. We are dealing with fiction. Of course it was written. If the answer had been luck, at least you hid behind the facade of chance. If the answer had been guile or skill, then you've presumably done the job we expect of you, which is to craft a story in which the protagonist's actions direct the plot, and to craft an outcome, whether it be success or failure, that comes directly from his or her choices. That's what storytelling is. If the only answer as to why this story has any outcome at all, success or failure, is "because that's how I wrote it," dude, that is exactly the kind of thing that will make any beginning writing teacher send you back to the fucking drawing board, and rightly fucking so.
Now, here's the real kicker of Slumdog Millionaire, though: None of that really matters. This isn't a story about a dude who wins twenty million rupees (which I looked up, by the way: it's $402,293.07). Throughout the story, Jamal reminds us time and again, he doesn't give a shit about the money. He never did. And here's where the trick lies:
Jamal is doing it all for a girl.
The backstory, the hefty chunk of the narrative, is given over to the complex class- and caste-based story of three "slumdogs" reacting very differently to their difficult surroundings and interacting along the way. Jamal is good-hearted, even naïve; his brother Salim is tougher, a bit cruel, and this side of him thrives in the underworld into which they're thrust; and Latika, well, she's the girl between them, mysteriously chaste (and chased), left behind, found again, bought and sold without a hand being laid on her until she becomes a gangster's moll. (The story has a sort of polished grit to it: it wallows in a somewhat sexless slum -- violence only, especially to or with children present. No Born Into Brothels here.) It's not what I'd call believable drama but I didn't mind it, the actors played it well and the scenery worked for me. The typical crime/slum elements, the love triangle and cruel sibling rivalry, the story of the meek gleaning strength from love, the damsel growing brave against her tormentors (also, and explicitly, through love) -- that's all fine and great. I can dig that story. I would have dug that story. But they tacked on the framework, the confounding veneer wherein the Writer-God rears his head and lewdly basks in Deus Ex Machina while we plod through a game show narrative with no backbone. (Ha, that was preposterously colorful, I admit, but it was fun to write. God, vitriol feels good sometimes, donnit?)
All Jamal wants is Latika, safe and his. The lengths he goes -- even being on the game show -- is always just to catch her eye, to prove his worth, and to offer her continual avenues of escape. He doesn't care if he loses the game show, in the end, because by then he has learned that he has won the girl. Normally, this kind of "fuck the money, I got the babe" story is pure gold for a romance, but the only thing is, it's all "written." The script is quite specific about this, entirely unambiguous about and proud of the fact that that none of this has been earned. Nobody overcame anything (except for Salim, who overcame his own dark side to finally do one right act, but sadly this isn't his story). In case you think I'm exaggerating, Jamal wins on a guess. He does not know the answer, and so he laughs and flippantly tosses something out there, even though he could have backed down and kept the ten mil ($200K). "Whatever," he seems to say, "this is going to work out, because I am a character written by the dude who wrote The Full Monty, and he is creating me out of events by some novelist, so fuck it. Let the whole pot ride. I can't lose!"
I can see why it's up for Best Picture, and why (if you trust the Golden Globes to guide you) it will win, because it highlights class differences, and ostensibly is the story of a guy who wins against seemingly insurmountable odds, and manages along the way to get the girl and keep his nose clean. Plus, you know, it's ethnic, it's exotic, and yet it's in English and about greed and love and game shows -- very safe concepts. Oscars (generally) seem to favor the Old Story With New Set Dressings for Best Picture, right? (2007 was a notable fluke.) What I can not see is how they can overlook this goofy script and nominate it for best adapted screenplay. But writing accolades from the Academy have consistently been the most baffling category (*cough* Little Miss Sunshine *doublecough* Juno). I'm willing to bet there's not a writer on the panel.
The truth is, I think I'd have called Slumdog Millionaire a passable, fast-paced, gorgeously shot story of good guys, bad guys, love and death, if the game show element hadn't been present. I mean, as it is I didn't hate it the way I hated Benjamin Button or anything, but it was built on such a troublesome conceit, I couldn't get past that. Because this whole "It Is Written"/game show element is presented as the main course to a series of side-dish vignettes telling how we got here, I ended the movie ready to go. I did stay for the Bollywood dance sequence which ran with the credits, and it was pretty awesome, but by that point I had no more love to give a dude who won a fortune he didn't deserve, escaped several villains only because his brother kept waffling between self-serving and sacrificing, and saved a girl through sheer ignorant stubbornness.
Sorry, guys. Or at least, sorry, Mom.
Oh, one more thing: props to Anil Kapoor (playing the game show host), who looks like an Indian Peter Sarsgaard and is just as good an actor.
And so:
Really?
I mean, really?
At the beginning of Slumdog Millionaire, we are presented with a multiple choice question, not unlike you would be if you were on the game show the film is built around:
How did Jamal Malik, an uneducated man from the slums of India, become a winner on the biggest game show in India?
- He got lucky
- He cheated
- He is a genius
- It was written
Let me translate. What that means, in other words, is there are four possibilities:
- our hero has unbelievably good luck (literally, luck so good it taxes our willingness to suspend disbelief)
- our hero has the guile and moral flexibility to trick his way here
- our hero has earned his place through wit and intellect
- some kind of higher power, say a God or a Screenwriter, has simply made it so.
Suffice it to say I'm only lingering on this point because, as you go, it becomes clear almost immediately that Jamal is no genius. He's uneducated, not even self-educated, and that's fine, but the odds of him simply knowing all of this shit is thrown out within ten minutes of flashbacks. Just as quickly you can eliminate the idea that Jamal is a cheat, as even after being arrested and tortured with electrocution to find out why he was able to beat the system, the same cops who beat him up have to admit that he is if anything too honest. This leaves us two options: random chance or predetermination.
Of course, I was waiting throughout for some kind of insane, implausible reveal that the questions weren't just coincidentally about his life but were in fact staged questions, that someone within the game show or even higher had intervened in his favor. That's a bit of the paranoid cynic's response to the question of destiny, I guess (and also the kind of thing someone who's been engrossed in Lost and Battlestar Galactica might expect), and though they toyed with it as a fake-out, that was also not the case. So the unspoken fifth option, that someone else was cheating for him, was also overruled.
But again, this leaves only two possibilities: either Jamal is just so lucky to have lived through twelve or so precise experiences that give him just the answers to the twelve or so precise questions he is asked on a game show, or Jamal's story works out in the end because that's how it was written, by the writers who wrote it. (Stepping outside the narrative for just a moment, I'd like to pose the following: what the hell is the difference between these two options? Really, we're already down to the one.) So, of course, in the end, the only reason he knew anything, got the money, caused so much trouble, is because that's how the story was written. It happened that way because that's what the script said. This is reinforced, in case you weren't clear, when the text reappears just before the credits, answering the question posed at the beginning:
- It was written.
The problem with stories hinging so dramatically and explicitly on destiny is, it's a goddamned story. YOU WROTE IT. YOU ADAPTED IT FROM SOMEONE ELSE WHO ALSO WROTE IT. We are dealing with fiction. Of course it was written. If the answer had been luck, at least you hid behind the facade of chance. If the answer had been guile or skill, then you've presumably done the job we expect of you, which is to craft a story in which the protagonist's actions direct the plot, and to craft an outcome, whether it be success or failure, that comes directly from his or her choices. That's what storytelling is. If the only answer as to why this story has any outcome at all, success or failure, is "because that's how I wrote it," dude, that is exactly the kind of thing that will make any beginning writing teacher send you back to the fucking drawing board, and rightly fucking so.
Now, here's the real kicker of Slumdog Millionaire, though: None of that really matters. This isn't a story about a dude who wins twenty million rupees (which I looked up, by the way: it's $402,293.07). Throughout the story, Jamal reminds us time and again, he doesn't give a shit about the money. He never did. And here's where the trick lies:
Jamal is doing it all for a girl.
The backstory, the hefty chunk of the narrative, is given over to the complex class- and caste-based story of three "slumdogs" reacting very differently to their difficult surroundings and interacting along the way. Jamal is good-hearted, even naïve; his brother Salim is tougher, a bit cruel, and this side of him thrives in the underworld into which they're thrust; and Latika, well, she's the girl between them, mysteriously chaste (and chased), left behind, found again, bought and sold without a hand being laid on her until she becomes a gangster's moll. (The story has a sort of polished grit to it: it wallows in a somewhat sexless slum -- violence only, especially to or with children present. No Born Into Brothels here.) It's not what I'd call believable drama but I didn't mind it, the actors played it well and the scenery worked for me. The typical crime/slum elements, the love triangle and cruel sibling rivalry, the story of the meek gleaning strength from love, the damsel growing brave against her tormentors (also, and explicitly, through love) -- that's all fine and great. I can dig that story. I would have dug that story. But they tacked on the framework, the confounding veneer wherein the Writer-God rears his head and lewdly basks in Deus Ex Machina while we plod through a game show narrative with no backbone. (Ha, that was preposterously colorful, I admit, but it was fun to write. God, vitriol feels good sometimes, donnit?)
All Jamal wants is Latika, safe and his. The lengths he goes -- even being on the game show -- is always just to catch her eye, to prove his worth, and to offer her continual avenues of escape. He doesn't care if he loses the game show, in the end, because by then he has learned that he has won the girl. Normally, this kind of "fuck the money, I got the babe" story is pure gold for a romance, but the only thing is, it's all "written." The script is quite specific about this, entirely unambiguous about and proud of the fact that that none of this has been earned. Nobody overcame anything (except for Salim, who overcame his own dark side to finally do one right act, but sadly this isn't his story). In case you think I'm exaggerating, Jamal wins on a guess. He does not know the answer, and so he laughs and flippantly tosses something out there, even though he could have backed down and kept the ten mil ($200K). "Whatever," he seems to say, "this is going to work out, because I am a character written by the dude who wrote The Full Monty, and he is creating me out of events by some novelist, so fuck it. Let the whole pot ride. I can't lose!"
I can see why it's up for Best Picture, and why (if you trust the Golden Globes to guide you) it will win, because it highlights class differences, and ostensibly is the story of a guy who wins against seemingly insurmountable odds, and manages along the way to get the girl and keep his nose clean. Plus, you know, it's ethnic, it's exotic, and yet it's in English and about greed and love and game shows -- very safe concepts. Oscars (generally) seem to favor the Old Story With New Set Dressings for Best Picture, right? (2007 was a notable fluke.) What I can not see is how they can overlook this goofy script and nominate it for best adapted screenplay. But writing accolades from the Academy have consistently been the most baffling category (*cough* Little Miss Sunshine *doublecough* Juno). I'm willing to bet there's not a writer on the panel.
The truth is, I think I'd have called Slumdog Millionaire a passable, fast-paced, gorgeously shot story of good guys, bad guys, love and death, if the game show element hadn't been present. I mean, as it is I didn't hate it the way I hated Benjamin Button or anything, but it was built on such a troublesome conceit, I couldn't get past that. Because this whole "It Is Written"/game show element is presented as the main course to a series of side-dish vignettes telling how we got here, I ended the movie ready to go. I did stay for the Bollywood dance sequence which ran with the credits, and it was pretty awesome, but by that point I had no more love to give a dude who won a fortune he didn't deserve, escaped several villains only because his brother kept waffling between self-serving and sacrificing, and saved a girl through sheer ignorant stubbornness.
Sorry, guys. Or at least, sorry, Mom.
Oh, one more thing: props to Anil Kapoor (playing the game show host), who looks like an Indian Peter Sarsgaard and is just as good an actor.