SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE Opens in Mumbai To Criticism

By Norm Schrager at January 21, 2009 | 10:10 pm | Print

Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, one of the most beloved movies of the past decade, is experiencing some major static — in the city where it takes place. Slumdog opens in the Indian city of Mumbai tomorrow, and you’d think the populace would go ballistic over such an enormously winning story. But not so.

The major criticism is that the film glamorizes the poverty that’s so unbelievably rampant in the city (nearly half of Mumbai’s 17 million people are homeless), that the perils of the destitute have been romanticized. The phrase the Indian media has been using to slag Boyle’s approach is “Indian exotica.”

So the Indian media resents that a feel-good semi-fantasy takes place in a poor city? If Boyle were to make a gritty, in-the-streets documentary about Mumbai as a companion piece, would he then be redeemed in their eyes?   

Boyle on the Slumdog Millionaire set

I remember hearing that illiterate children and adults rushed to theaters regularly — sometimes daily — to watch 2001′s Lagaan, the wonderful Bollywood underdog story that pitted poor Indians against the snooty British in cricket. For roughly twenty cents, people with nothing had something to cheer for. Perhaps the charm and romance of Slumdog Millionaire can do the same — especially when Indians keep in mind Hollywood is completely over the moon about this movie.

Danny Boyle’s reply to the Indian press? Here’s what he said at a press conference:
“The thing that I wanted people to take away from the film was … this breathtaking, breathtaking resilience of people and the joy of people despite their circumstances — that lust for life.”

Thanks The Hollywood Reporter

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