The film 'Slumdog Millionaire' has been drawing lots of great reviews from both critics and fans since it opened in the United States last year. This Dickensian blend of gritty urban slum realism and fairy-tale romance...OK, I'm not gonna gush. You know how you feel about it.
But the film had not opened in India until last week. I thought it might be interesting to see how the media in India have been treating the film. Join me below the fold if you'd like to find out as well...
A good place to start may be with the storm surrounding a comment by Bollywood film superstar Amitabh Bachchan. (This is doubly amusing, as Bachchan is the film star idolized by the slum boys in the movie; actually, make that triply amusing, as Bachchan also was the first host of the actual 'Who Wants to be A Millionaire' on Indian television.)
In any case, Bachchan started the storm with a comment made on his blog (Yes! He blogs!):
If SM projects India as Third World dirty under belly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky under belly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations. Its just that the SM idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a Westerner, gets creative Globe recognition. The other would perhaps not.
The commercial escapist world of Indian Cinema had vociferously battled for years , on the attention paid and the adulation given to the legendary Satyajit Ray at all the prestigious Film Festivals of the West, and not a word of appreciation for the entertaining mass oriented box office block busters that were being churned out from Mumbai. The argument. Ray portrayed reality. The other escapism, fantasy and incredulous posturing.
This comment touched two nerves surrounding reaction in India to Slumdog. The first as to whether the film shows India in a poor light, and the second as to what extent it can be claimed as an Indian film.
A letter to the editor in the Statesman newspaper of Kolkata (Calcutta) summed up the two grievances:
Sir, ~ The film, Slumdog Millionaire, is a pathetic, even sadistic, attempt to tarnish India’s image. The cinematic version is an ugly form of fiction, that inspires despair and not hope. It is being lapped up by unsuspecting people both in India and abroad, who, in their desire to bring Indians into the limelight are actually denigrating the country.
The film ought to have inspired people to aim higher through entrepreneurship and not throw them into the pit of despair by suggesting that only accidental fortune can bring a slum child out of a miserable situation of poverty. A disgusting scene showing Jamaal coming out of a pit of shit just to get an autograph from Amitabh Bacchan should have been edited. And it would have been better had Boyle portrayed the best of India and its achievements towards the end.
When foreigners come to India and take photographs of filth, slums, and the poor, their motive is sadism; they derive pleasure from looking at these visuals. Films like Slumdog Millionaire appeal to the same type of audience who derive morbid pleasure in the misery of those who are less fortunate. There is a scene where a white woman gives money to the poor child and says: ‘’If begging is true India, then giving alms is true American." And we Indians are still proud about the movie getting Oscar nominations.
In another scene, Anil Kapoor taunts Jamaal on his slum background and the audience guffaws in response. Can we even imagine Amitabh behaving like this in the KBC show? This scene brings out the primitive western instincts, as the saviours of moral uprightness, a colonial hangover that refuses to go and the stereotyping of Indians.
India’s negatives ought not to be exposed to get international awards. Show more filth of India and the Third World and win Golden Globes and Oscars. This is the mantra of the westerners. A movie like Lagaan was not deemed worthy for Oscars simply because it showcased the management skills of Indian villagers, expertise that overwhelmed the whites.
AR Rahman might get the Oscars because he has worked in a Hollywood production. Nothing else. He has composed better music in other films that were worthy of Oscars.
Newspaper film reviewers seemed to dismiss the idea that Slumdog represents an affront to India, whether they liked the movie or not. Nikhat Kazmi, in a positive review in the Times of India had this to say:
FORGET the twitter about aggrieved national sentiment. For, Slumdog Millionaire is neither poverty porn nor slum tourism. No, unlike what the desi nationalists' blogosphere claims, it is not a case of the infamous western eye ferreting out oriental squalor and peddling it as the exotic dirt bowl of the east. No, Slumdog Millionaire is just a piece of riveting cinema, meant to be savoured as a Cinderella-like fairy tale, with the edge of a thriller and the vision of an artist. It was never meant to be a documentary on the down and out in Dharavi. And it isn't.
Mayank Shekhar of the Mumbai Mirror is less enamored of the film, but defends it against the criticism that it is anti-India:
Sure, the film is an expression of poverty and crime and racial and class divides that rich, insular Indians shy away from discussing too often. They feel unfairly clubbed with millions of Indian-poor when such books or films become popular abroad. There is fair exaggeration.
Yet, it’d be unfair to sense any western bias. If anything, Slumdog is a far more entertaining film than last year’s Italian Cannes-winner Gomorra, set in the slums or ghettos of Naples.
Weighing in with a strong dissent was Bishakha Datta of Outlook India:
The episodic construction, the cardboard and one-dimensional characters, the 'garbage tourism' feel, which some have called 'poverty porn' -- it's all just slumbug.
Indian film journalist Derek Bose examined Slumdog with erudite subtlety and offered a positive verdict in the Kolkata Statesman:
hey are finding fault in the manner the filmmaker has supposedly exploited Mumbai’s "murky underbelly", turning it into an exportable product for personal fame and fortune. This was the kind of insensitivity Mira Nair was accused of when Salaam Bombay was nominated for the Oscars in 1988. Earlier, Shashi Kapoor poked fun at Rabindra Dharmaraj for displaying Smita Patil’s armpit hair in Chakra (the film was also set in a Mumbai slum) to win the National Award. Even the venerable Satyajit Ray was not spared after Nargis charged him in parliament with making capital by peddling India’s poverty abroad. She had conveniently forgotten that as an actress, she owed all her fame and fortune to Mehboob Khan who had cast her as Radha in absolute bone grinding poverty in Mother India.
Living in poverty is no sin. And being portrayed so on celluloid is even less so. From Luis Bunuel to Vittorio de Sica to Robert Bresson to Akira Kurosawa, all the masters of world cinema have produced their most memorable works by mirroring the challenges and contradictions of life in penury, if only to celebrate the triumph of the human spirit in such adverse conditions. Ditto for Indian cinema, whether it was Ritwik Ghatak or Ramu Kariat, Girish Kasaravalli or Narsingh Rao, Bhaben Saikia or Jabbar Patel. In Bollywood also, some of the most successful films of Amitabh Bachchan (who incidentally, started the "murky underbelly" controversy on his blog) like Deewar and Trishul are actually soul stirring rags-to-riches sagas. After all, everybody loves an underdog.
Problems arise when poverty becomes a fetish with the filmmaker and he fails to provide a redeeming moment in the film....These all-too-familiar scenes have become cinematic clichés with nothing ennobling about them. In fact, they are almost as disturbingly vulgar as sexual pornography in their presentation and serve just about the same purpose ~ to excite voyeurism in those who find themselves in a privileged (read westerners) position. To be insulated from all the suffering they see on screen is supposed to leave them with a feel-good effect. Strangely enough, many internationally acclaimed filmmakers still live by this mistaken belief.
Boyle could easily have slipped into this miserable claptrap given a script that makes a meal out of Mumbai’s low life....but the filmmaker refuses to get fenced-in by the demands of "gritty realism" and instead takes the free-wheeling Bollywoodian route of mindless melodrama, song-and-dance and easy predictability. Effectively, the film takes you along on an exhilaratingly realistic fairytale journey, true to Mumbai’s never-say-die spirit.
A writer on the website Khabrein.info was prepared to hate it but was instead seduced:
I went to see it purely out of curiosity. Just wanted to know of the ways in which India is projected as an intensely poverty stricken third world country. I just can’t help it. There is enough proof that the only art of India the ‘goras’ appreciate is the art of degrading India. The enormous appreciation earned by Aravind Adiga for his book ‘White Tiger’ is the best example. I would rate it as the most disgusting book I have ever read. I could feel my blood boil reading his mortifying portrayal of India as a massive garbage dump. I felt that ‘Slumdog’ would provoke the same reaction from me. Surprisingly, I liked it.
‘Slumdog’ has come across a lot of criticism in India. But I felt that the movie was well made & the focus was more on the ‘rags to riches’ story of the protagonist than the Indian poverty. The harsh realities are depicted in a more subtle manner.
Vikas Swarup,the Indian author of Q & A, the novel the movie is based on, defends the film in an interview in The Times of India:
"There is nothing negative about the slums as depicted in the film. Slum dwellers are not shown as people wallowing in sorrow. On the contrary, they are trying to make their life better, they have aspirations, dreams and desires. The fact that the slums are giving way to skyscrapers is a reality. In the end, the film is about hope and survival."
The author seems quite pleased by the film, although the screenplay differs from the novel in several important ways. Swarup feels his novel was predicated more on the idea of luck, whereas the film based the story more on the idea of destiny. Also, in the novel, the main character was named Ram Mohammad Thomas, an everyman name including Hindu, Muslim and Christian parts. The film, however, gave the protaganist a Muslim name, and indeed featured a sequence that showed Hindu on Muslim violence.
In yet another article in the Times of India, Santosh Desai says it is time to stop crying about depictions of poverty in India:
Of course, India is stereotyped by the West. Take away spirituality and poverty, and India to the outside eye is just a large country with an unnervingly diverse topography and poor sanitation. India's progress is in some ways an act of poor sportsmanship; it was always believed that India would be timeless and enigmatic in a deep spiritual kind of way. The New India story is thus disruptive and disturbing for it changes the accepted order of the world....
It was perhaps more understandable why we were touchy about the representation of Indian poverty 20 years ago. At that time, we feared that to be our unchanging reality and it made us deeply ashamed. Today, when we believe that India is on its way up, why do we still respond negatively?
Perhaps it is time to take all the blathering we do about Brand India more seriously. India is unique because it can potentially show the world a new way. In the slums of Dharavi, we find ambition that doesn't lose its way and joy that comes from knowing what is truly precious about life. We can see more clearly why material growth is not the same as progress and how meaning in life is independent of one's means....
The slum is not the other India and Dharavi is not an aberration. It is both a condemnation and a celebration of who we are. We need to own it, change it, admire it and hate it. We don't need to ignore it. And if some Western director makes a film about it, we don't need to fear it.
These debates have had a number of real-world consequences. Movie theaters have been attacked by people protesting that the film denigrated poverty, and the social activist Tateshwar Vishwakarma has filed a lawsuit to have the name of the film changed.
There is also continuing controversy as to how much the child actors were paid for their work, and whether they were exploited. An article in the Hindustan Times presented the two sides:
he parents of two shantytown child actors whose skills helped Slumdog Millionaire win Oscar nominations and millions in gate receipts have said they were underpaid by the film's makers.
The parents of Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, who live along railway tracks in Bandra, Mumbai, have accused the film's producers of exploiting and underpaying the eight-year-olds....They said Rubina, who played Latika, was paid 500 pounds for a year's work while Azharuddin, who acted as Salim, received 1,700 pounds....
"There is none of the money left. It was all spent on medicines to help me fight TB," Azharuddin's father, Mohammed Ismail, told the Daily Telegraph.
"We feel that the kids have been left behind by the film. They have told us there is a trust fund but we know nothing about it and have no guarantees."
Rubina's father Rafiq Ali Kureshi, a carpenter who has been out of work since breaking his leg during filming, said: "I am very happy the movie is doing so well, but it is making so much money and so much fame and the money they paid us is nothing.
"They should pay more. I have no regrets. I just had no knowledge of what she should have been paid."
The filmakers respond in the same article:
A spokesman for the American distributors Fox Searchlight said: "The welfare of Azhar and Rubina has always been a top priority for everyone involved with Slumdog Millionaire.
"A plan has been in place for over 12 months to ensure that their experience gained while working on Slumdog Millionaire would be of long term benefit. For 30 days' work, the children were paid three times the average local annual adult salary.
"Last year after completing filming, they were enrolled in school for the first time and a fund was established for their future welfare, which they will receive if they are still in school when they turn 18...."The children had never attended school, and in consultation with their parents we agreed that this would be our priority. Since June 2008 and at our expense, both kids have been attending school and they are flourishing under the tutelage of their dedicated and committed teachers."
Nevertheless, director Boyle has stepped up his efforts to make sure money from the film benefits those who live in the Mumbai slums:
Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle plans to donate a 'significant' amount of profits from the critically acclaimed film to the Mumbai slums where the film is set. He said that investors are planning to meet in London next week to decide how much money to put into a special fund and how best to distribute the cash.
"We want to set it up as soon as possible. What absolutely must not happen is that the money disappears, or people think this is a PR stunt," Times Online quoted Boyle as saying. The film, which tracks the story of an 18-year-old slum dweller from rags to riches, has earned millions at box office.
And how about some reaction from the slums themselves?
Dharavi, the slum that provides the setting for the blockbuster arthouse film, houses none of the cineplexes where it has just staged its commercial release in India. Shown the British-made film on a pirated DVD in a hut settlement just off the chaotic 60-Foot Road, one of Dharavi's main thoroughfares, parts of the movie seemed to ring true for the Wala family, long-time residents of the slum who make their living from pottery.
"Ah look! Look! That's the pipeline where we always play, wow," screamed one of the Wala children. The pipeline runs along one of Dharavi's rubbish-filled canals....
In the Wala hutment, which is spotlessly clean despite the squalor outside, the children eat home-cooked samosas, completely absorbed by the movie. They know its optimistic message is not unrealistic. One neighbour recently landed a job in a multinational bank.
"If I won $1m like the guy in the movie, I would leave Dharavi, open a good business and buy [a] bigger house for my family," said one of the kids, Krunal Wala. The older family members, however, questioned the film's depiction of violence in the slum and the main character being known as "dog", which they view as culturally offensive.
Indeed, an outfit that runs 'reality tours' into the slums takes pride in showing people more than filth and squalor:
Reality Tours, a company that has been offering guided tours through the interiors of Dharavi for the past three years should ideally be happy with the kind of response they've been getting these days. Demand for these tours is on a rise. But not necessarily for the right reasons. "It is the poverty they probably want to see," smirks Krishna Poojari, organiser. Poojari's tour conditions are very strict -- no cameras and only six persons at a time....
Mark Styles who accompanied Cameron on the tour was apprehensive before he entered the area. But he has stepped out with an admiration for the dwellers. "There is nobody in the place who is sitting without work. There are makeshift schools in every corner where students are studying and helping their families simultaneously," he says....
Deepa XXX of Mumbai Magic tours conducts similar tours in Dharavi. She talks about a model of a village in Gandhi Bhavan that shows Gandhi's ideal living villages.
"Communities in Dharavi live in a similar manner, with women working and children playing in the courtyard. Come to Dharavi and not once will you see anybody begging. They might do it on the signals but not here.Dharavi demands that kind of respect and it gets it," she says.
Cameron agrees, after the tour Dharavi isn't a slum anymore but a billion dollar industry. "The work here is magnificent. There are plenty of organised industries here. Dharavi is nothing like what they have portrayed in the movie," he insists.
Overall, I feel the debate generated by Boyle's skillful mix of realism and fantasy seems healthy. What do you think?