Slumdog Millionaire

Feel-good film doesn't hide India's truth | theage.com.au

Slumdog Millionaire's success may spark more open discussion about poverty.

IT'S EASY to feel a little queasy at the sight of filthy rich celebrities looking impossibly glamorous while celebrating a film about poverty in India. That is the view of Hindustan Times columnist Mondy Thepar, who attributed the astonishing success of Slumdog Millionaire — which won four Golden Globes this week including for best drama — to "the West's voyeuristic obsession with joy amid poverty, vitality among the super-poor".

Such cynicism is not entirely specious. The film may depict life in the slums of Mumbai, but it's ultimately a feel-good film. The main character's story is told through the device of his appearance on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, which he wins after chasing and finding true love and a better life. We can assume the good guys live happily ever after. All's well that ends well, right?

Well, sort of. The problem with such arguments isn't so much that they're incorrect, but that they overlook the context in which Slumdog Millionaire is being received. If we're honest, we'll admit that to date our growing fascination with India is decidedly romantic. For many of us, India is about cricket, food, vibrant colour and the joyous frivolity and unabashed escapism of Bollywood. It's exotic and invigorating, even if tarnished by bothersome telemarketers. We don't usually engage with India in any meaningful sense. We consume it.

But Slumdog Millionaire takes us to the India we barely contemplate — one far more common than the India we think we know. Its characters do not live in an exceptional hard-luck setting, but in a mainstream one. The forgotten fact is that most of urban India lives in the slums.

The UN estimates that 55 per cent of India's city folk live in a space smaller than a queen-sized bed. Even if we vaguely know this, most of us never conjure up images of what it means: the astonishing population density, the raw sewage and the associated health problems. And we almost certainly fail to recall the other issues this film engages: Hindu nationalist mob violence, unmonitored police brutality, sex trafficking and the deliberate mutilation of children who are then inducted into institutionalised begging. These are images we are more likely to associate with Pakistan or Thailand. Indeed, this is probably the secret of Slumdog Millionaire's success. Despite the love story that sugar-coats the film, its cinematic reconstruction of slum life shocks us.

In a very real way, the film's enormous Western success exposes our level of ignorance about the maladies that plague Indian society. One may criticise that ignorance, but this only underscores the educational contribution being made. The fact that Slumdog Millionaire is being noticed so widely should therefore be pleasing.

This film may not attract an audience among Indians already familiar with the facts of slum life but that does not mean there will be no Indian audience for it at all. Indeed, this provides possibly the best reason to celebrate this Golden Globe success. The brutal inequalities of Indian society remain a sensitive topic, and have long been met with denial among India's rapidly growing middle class. Certainly, the most popular Indian films do not deal seriously with such themes. Slumdog Millionaire is the work of British director Danny Boyle and as the Mumbaian actor and social activist Gerson da Cunha notes: "It takes a foreigner to make a true inventive film about Mumbai."