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NEW DELHI — The lunchtime hum of a Delhi garden café was split by a piercing cry. “You! You're one of those! Those Shining India types!” The accuser was Seema Guha, a writer sporting giant sunglasses and vermilion lipstick. The object of her ire was a grey-bearded cultural commentator who disapproved of Slumdog Millionaire. And thus erupted another version of an argument being had, in a multitude of languages, across India.
Some see the improbable tale of a boy from a Mumbai slum who makes it to game-show stardom as a hackneyed postcard of the worst of India, a film obsessed with the filth of the shantytowns, religious riots and brutal police. They say it shows none of the new India – “India Shining,” in the words of a slogan used in the last election and it relies on outdated clichés. Others say that's a parochial defensiveness (as Ms. Guha dismissed it) for a fine bit of cinema, and who cares that it was made by Britain's Danny Boyle? “I loved it,” Ms. Guha said with a harrumph.
Ten Oscar nominations and plenty of international hype have served to guarantee the film lots of talk. Debate, however, has not been matched by box-office success: In its opening week in mainstream theatres last week, the film (particularly the dubbed-into-Hindi version) tanked, outsold by almost every bit of Bollywood dance and romance.
In this, Slumdog Millionaire is much like Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger (winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize) and other artistic works that take a critical look at a rapidly changing India – fodder for the chattering classes and the fundamentalist hardliners – oddly allied in their preoccupations – but of little interest to the vast majority of Indians who are busy getting on with the gritty business of living.
From left, actress Freida Pinto, writer Simon Beaufoy, producer Christian Colson, director Danny Boyle and composer A.R. Rahman pose with the award for Best Picture for Slumdog Millionaire at the 14th annual Critics' Choice awards in Santa Monica, Calif., on Thursday. (Hector Mata/Reuters)
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Slumdog rules at Critics' Choice
The critics have spoken, and 'Slumdog Millionaire' is their final answer. The rags-to-riches tale picked up five awards, including best picture, at Thursday night's Critics' Choice Awards. (Jan. 8)
Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) directs this award-winning drama about an Indian boy who appears on Who Wants to be a Millionaire
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It is front-page news every time the film is nominated for one of its growing heap of awards, which are noted with national pride – Mr. Boyle had an Indian co-director and most of the rest of the production team and crew are Indian, although the production companies are foreign. That pride should be on the rise, since the film's Oscar hopes were bolstered on the weekend when Mr. Boyle got the nod for best director from the Directors Guild of America. The DGA honour has been matched by an Oscar for best director in all but six of the award's 61 years. At the same time, plenty of people have found reason to protest. A community group filed public-interest legislation in Gujarat to try to stop the film from being shown because, the lawsuit alleges, it portrays slum-dwellers badly. Hindu fundamentalist political parties have organized pickets outside multiplexes showing the film, which they say depicts the Hindu god Ram in a negative light. Most such protests have been peaceful, although one, in Goa last week, saw members of the powerful nationalist Hindu group Shiv Sena trash a theatre. In Chandigarh, slum residents led by the Vishva Hindu Parishad, a Hindu group, protested the film based on its title.
“The name of the film depicts the sick mentality of Britishers,” scowled spokesman Vijay Singh Bhardwaj. “Even so many years after independence, the mindsets of English people have not changed towards Indians.”
The godfather of Indian film, beloved actor Amitabh Bachchan (who has an almost-cameo in the film when main character Jamal dives into an open latrine in an effort to get his autograph) stirred things up when he wrote in his widely read blog that, “If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as [a] Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations. It's just that the Slumdog Millionaire idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a Westerner gets creative global recognition.”
Outside a Delhi theatre last week, a group of university students who skipped class to see the film (“This is more important – it will win an Oscar!” explained Pallavi Chandrasekar) were debating that very point. Ms. Chandrasekar, a 19-year-old political science student, disapproved of the film. “They showed the bad side. They're not showing what's really true.” But her friend Daphne Vallado, 19 and taking commerce, disagreed. “People think that because India is doing all this back-office work there is a boom and everyone is prospering. But we have so many people that it's not enough. There are not enough jobs, and the film showed the reality many people are living in,” she said.
Ms. Chandrasekar fretted that because the film was made by a big-name foreign director, it will get a lot of international attention and its nuance will be lost on those who don't know India. “People from outside will see it and think India is just people jumping in [excrement] and the ignorance of authorities and people dying in riots. And we have good things, too.” Countered her friend, “When someone from India makes movies with these things in them, no one pays attention.”
Ms. Guha, who is diplomatic editor for the Mumbai newspaper DNA, said she in fact thinks any one of a number of Indian directors might have made the film. Her lunchtime argument, she later acknowledged, was just an effort by friends to wind her up, but she continues to staunchly champion the film.
“I think it's really beautiful and it's a good thing because it reminds people of what India is. It's not just shining – it gives the other vision without slamming it and it talks about the guts and the hope the people have,” she said.
“It's wonderful – for me it doesn't matter who made it.”