4 Golden globes, 31 awards and 37 more nominations for a movie that shows only about the slums and the negative side of our country.Right from the beginning it shows about the hopeless situation of the slums and violence and kids getting spoilt.Is this the message that the movie wants to spread? I did not find anything striking in the movie that could win an award. Its a good movie,good concept,awesome music and some exceptional acting but not a possible-Oscar winnable stuff if Oscar is meant for the meaningful. But it has never been that way with the Oscars. Rarely the deserving movies win one.( For instance The Shawshank Redemption, The pursuit of happYness and there are many more...)One thing that I have noticed is that the people who give away the awards (mostly the westerners) is that,they seem to like the idea of a poor,struggling and corrupted India and anything on that would win an award! I recently read the book by Aravind Adiga, 'The white tiger' which won the Man-Booker prize for 2008. At first i was really happy that for the second time in three years, an Indian had won the prize. I was very keen to read the book. I even had plans of buying my own copy but soon a very close friend of mine told me that he'd bought the book. Eventually,I borrowed it from
him, n i believe i did a wise decision by not buying a copy for myself.
The book is in the form of a letter written by a poor village boy from North India,now a self proclaimed 'entrepreneur', sitting confidently in Bangalore, to a Chinese premiere who will be visiting India and telling him how bad and messed up India is and at the same time glorifying China. Now why would anyone do that?
The guy grows up in a bad family, goes to a bad school, witnesses bad politics, works for a good owner with bad brothers and a bad wife, with bad co-workers, makes bad friends, does all the bad jobs, gets into bad problems, and finally for no accurate reason does the worst job by murdering his master and running away so smartly that the bad police of India cannot catch him at any cost. Then he comes to Bangalore and even becomes the owner of a taxi service company! Is this remotely plausible? I cannot believe this book, which doesn't tell one good thing about our country won a prestigious prize and people cheer about it!
There have been movies like Rang De Basanti,A Wednesday which carry far more meaning and sense of pride in them. These may not be by a Shah rukh khan or a western director but don't these movies make us all proud? Don't they ignite us? Don't the send out a stern message to all of us? How beautiful are the books by R.K.Narayan(which i might be writing about in my future blogs)! What is so wrong with them as to not have deserved a Booker prize? There are so many books that speak high about our country. Why don't they deserve a prize?It's very apparent that such movies are totally ignored in the larger arena. Sensible movies and books do not have any place where as the ones which are demeaning are celebrated.
There could even be a slumdog billionaire but in reality it's only the director and the concerned people who ultimately promote themselves to being billionaires and a slumdog remains a slumdog.
1 comment:
u know wat, u gt my vote... at first when i saw d movie while all d hype was surrounding it, tot it has a worth while story to tell, so i began to watch, at first i was happy tat i gt a GOOD print to watch(b4 i watch d movie, i chk for d print :D ) then as the movie progressed , the movie goes on protrayin , few may say deliberately ! abt the stuff a slum guy in mumbai faces.... frm his mom being hit by an angry mob driven by religious bias ... to children being driven in2 begging and protitute hood....
i began to wonder wat effect it mite have on a young kid frm munbai who mite watch this movie ... at first i couldn form a firm anti opinion abt it, prob cos i was over whelmed by the recognition it gt...
for a person like me , i'd anytime rate Legend Of Bhagat Singh or more rescently A Wednesday more than this movie , as i somehow feel it will make us more harm than good!
U've a valid point to make abt better/meaningful films nt being given oscars.... i can relate this slumdog story with "Blood Diamond" whr though the theme of the story is diff , it is similar in away that it protrays poverty and wat the directors think as seemingly hopeless situations , there it illegal diamond trade at cost of civilian lives.. here, not so severe but jus a hopeless catch 22 situation wit currupt police politics and society's image of slums... but it is dangerous to spread this view to the world abt this, i say thus as a patriot and not as a cinematic person .
and the director , speaking to a news channel when asked if he had shown the worst situations like a singing beggar's eyes being taken off by a quack or abt the shit holes , he said tat he wanted to protray abt the extremes of this gr8 city, mumbai... to be frank, i was nt very much satisfied by his answer , as i couldn see any 2nd extreme in the film, i may be wrong though.. the film wanted to showcase mumbai as a slumcity , which though i cant deny at this movement, cant bear to think that this wil do us more harm than good! :(
with all due respect to film makers of Blood Diamond and Slumdog , both are extreamly good films cinematicaly ... one has bagged gold, and other on its way, jus waiting for the day... but the ppl of that region, in heart woud probably not be very comfortable to see it...
it is the American's (Oscar givin ppl ) who'll enjoy and film, but the regional ppl who shud/will feel the pain frm inside..
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