My favorite musician won an Oscar. Yet I’m unhappy.
So, Slumdog Millionaire won 8 Oscards and A.R. Rahman (India’s favorite musician) won 2! Well, every Indian I know is celebrating and is feeling proud. Yet I’m not.
Slumdog Millionaire is what I would call a B-grade Bollywood flick. Even Lagaan, India’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Film for 2001 is way, way better than Slumdog Millionaire. I guess it would have won an Oscar if the theme was based on baseball or Amercian Football rather than the lesser known Cricket (which is like a religion among us Indians).
Slumdog Millionaire depicts everything that is not India. Yes, there have been numerous discussions and debates on how the movie creates this image of India as a slum dwelling nation. But, personally, the movie itself is a big disappointment for me (and thousands of other Bollywood film followers) and I’m really surprised how the American movie going folks liked this movie. Is it because they like the so called ‘masala’, the rags-to-riches miracle – things that are so typical of all Indian movies?
That Rahman won 2 oscards is definitely a reason to celebrate but the fact that he won it for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ is definitely a let down. Rahman is a great musician and he deserves many, many Oscars, but for ‘Slumdog’ not.
posted by Sai | 12:39 AM
4 Comments:
This post has been removed by the author.
@Aji
Don't tell me you haven't seen any of this in any Indian movie.
Hey Sai,
Nice thoughts. I partially agree to it and partially not.
I completely agree that Slumdog is not one ARRs Oscar worthy creations. We, Indians have been listening to ARRs melodies for the last decade or so. There are far better ARR flicks than Slumdog. For instance, Roja, Bombay, Rang de basanti, lagaan, Dil Se and the list goes on.
The rags to riches story that Boyle has projected is an OK, not so new theme, but more than that the idea of the movie, that you need not have practical education to become a millionaire, is worth a thought. The slum life of Dharavi is off course true, although it looks harsh. I agree that Boyle has adopted the harsher way to show the sufferings of Jamal and Aslam, being a resident of Mumbai for 20 yrs, I feel the incidents shown in Mumbai are still inherent in Dharavi. It might shown as an exageration though. But overall, I felt the movie was OK, but again the debatable aspect is "Does it deservce 8 Oscars, with so many other great movies around"
Good job on the blog.
Keep going !!!
This movie definitely didnt deserve Best Picture. To that I will agree.
As for the movie itself, I'm not sure why there is so much hullabaloo about it being untrue. A lot of what is being depicted is the very nature of slum life in bombay. Most of us just shy away from it or ignore it. The fact that this has been brought out to the world, hurts us. True, many people now think that this is all the country is, which it is not. I wonder if this is a better impression to have than a country where everyone has bullock carts, and lives in huts on a farm. Thats not the country either. The way this story is being broadcast across the world, is wrong. But hey, nobody said it was based on a true story. If it was some fictional city, SimCity, would you object so much? Just because it hits close to home, should you complain? Or should you do something to fix the larger problems?
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