I finally went ahead and did what many P3Ps would have done it on the sly but what the venerable Shobhaa De confessed to in the very public columns of a national daily.
I watched a pirated copy of Slumdog Millionaire. A few days before it rained Golden Globes. Some days before it gets officially released in India and possibly rakes in record-breaking collections.
Except for giving a fleeting sense of achievement on joining Shobhaa De in the ‘me too’ caucus, the film did little to excite. Not that the film was bad in any way. Far from it. It was a perfectly entertaining film. And like any well-crafted work of cinematic art, it has its moments of sublime charm, its share of gut-wrenching scenes and its share of searing dialogues. But all these don’t really come together to make a truly memorable film. Nor are the performances of the lead actors in the danger of being reckoned as landmarks in the histrionic history of any wood, Holly, Bolly or even Lolly.
Let’s take our over-hyped re-invention artiste, Anil Kapoor. Donning the role of a TV show host so majestically essayed by Amitabh Bachchan in real life (KBC), Kapoor robs the character of every iota of dignity. Nobody may grudge an ageing actor his prejudices about the awareness quotient of a Chaiwala, but not even a national icon can get away with uncouth snobbery on a TV show. The repeated berating of Jamal as a teaboy and constant references to his lowly status by Prem, the host of the TV show, may have been scripted to highlight the chinks in Prem’s character, a man who enjoys the blind adulation of millions of Indians. But it only succeeds in adding unnecessary melodrama. And in an insane moment, Kapoor also lurches into a ludicrous jig, looking like an uninvited baraati in Chandni Chowk. Long after it’s gone off the air, what one remembers of KBC is not the names of the winners nor the questions but the amazing grace and humility with which Amitabh dealt with all the participants, their families and friends. Or is it somebody’s case that Prem’s character was modelled after the altogether different host of KBC2?
Traversing a period of over a decade, the structure of the film does not lend itself to sustained linear progression. As a result, all actors end up doing what could be termed ‘significant cameos’, even as little Jamal sparkles in his role. AR Rahman could have got the Golden Globe and the Oscar for many of his film scores, but Slumdog Millionaire is certainly not one among them. His compositions for the film maybe classified as experimentation due to habit. The last song of the film, quite clearly an afterthought in due deference to the diktats of the Indian box-office remains just that. An afterthought.
So why’s there so much hoopla about the film? I’d hate to be a cynic but this smells like the Miss World/Universe days all over again. Remember the 1990s when the world suddenly woke up to the beauty quotient of India and we had a rash of beauty queens carrying the burden from Asia-Pacific to the Atlantic? In fact, it seemed as if all that was required to be crowned Miss World/Universe/Galaxy was to look adequately like a woman and wear a sash that said ‘India’. It was not much later that we learnt about the cosmetics industry’s not very altruistic role in placing India firmly on the beauty map of the world. The accolades for Slumdog Millionaire appear to be similarly market-driven. A tribute neither to the artistry nor to the artistes of the film but to the imperatives of the emerging global economic situation.
Now, that’d be a real pity!
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