Popular Bollywood
star Anil Kapoor, joined the cast in another key role: that of Prem, the
anxious, egotistical host of “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?” who mystified
by Jamal’s knowledge, calls the cops in on the cusp of his big win. Prem is
also from the slums. He wants to hold onto his power no matter what and
Jamal seems like a threat to him.
Each chapter of
Jamal’s increasingly layered story reveals where he learned the answers to
the show’s seemingly impossible quizzes. But one question remains a mystery:
what is this young man with no apparent desire for riches really doing on
the game show? When the new day dawns and Jamal returns to answer the final
question, the Inspector and sixty million viewers are about to find out…
The result is the
sweeping, stylish, intoxicatingly human experience of Slum dog Millionaire.
For Danny Boyle, the challenge was to capture the light and dark contrasts
of the city with fresh eyes – creating a visceral, immediate experience for
audiences, immersing them in its sweltering heat and teeming corridors. His
plan was to shoot in the heart of the city’s infamous but rarely explored
slums, capturing their energy and urgency on-the-fly, with an unforced
realism. As a newcomer, his own emotional reactions to his first forays into
the city became part and parcel of the film’s design. “I thought it was an
extraordinary place in the extremes that you experience there.
Latika,
the love of Jamal’s life, who drives his story from the first time he meets
her as a desperate, brokenhearted street urchin in the pouring rain until
the moment she unexpectedly reappears in his life. His incessant zeal for
Latika makes this film a vibrant love story. An Indian model and newcomer to
acting, Freida Pinto, who Simon Beaufoy, the script writer of this film
says, “has got that extraordinary beauty alongside a strong sense of sadness
about her, which we needed very much for her part in the film.”
For Pinto, who makes
her film debut in Slum dog Millionaire, approaching the character of Latika
was an exciting process. Having Boyle guide her through the scenes,
offering advice and allowing her the freedom to try different approaches
meant she quickly developed a solid understanding of where the character’s
strengths come from. “Danny wanted me to explore the character as much as I
could. Internalization is something that Danny really taught me,” she says.
Boyle also felt that
the film’s lead, Dev Patel, who stars as Jamal, would benefit from spending
time in Mumbai before the cameras rolled and invited the young actor to come
along on several location scouts.
Azharuddin
Mohammed Ismail who plays the young Salim and Rubina Ali, who plays the
young Latika, were both found in the slums of Mumbai and, knowing no
English, speak in their native Hindi dialects in their wrenchingly realistic
scenes. For Patel, the experience helped him better understand the character
and where he came from. But also, the challenges that you face are just
beyond anything you can imagine.
“I’ve been to slums
before but in different places in the world, like Kibera in Kenya, but this
was different in all its contradictions. There’s this smell you get first of
all… This incredible mixture of excrement and then saffron, a mixture of the
sweet and the sour,” All of these observations and sensations became part of
the intensely textured fabric of the film.
“I really wanted to
have a chance to play a scene when I was actually in the depths, in the
slums, immersed in that environment,” says Patel. “Being on the locations
really helped me to build a background for Jamal and see where he’d grown
up. In one location Danny saw a few kids playing the drums on the street.
They were preparing for the Ganesha Festival. Danny told me to turn my
T-shirt inside out, because I had a big logo on it, and said, ‘Go and join
them!’
Christian Colson, the
producer notes that the production purposefully left the beaten path behind.
“Some of the specific challenges we faced were of our own making, in as much
as we elected to shoot the vast majority of this movie in real locations, on
the streets of one of the most densely populated and chaotic cities on
earth,” he says.
“We put as many real
slum-dwelling people in the film as we could get,” says Boyle. “The slums
are actually thriving, bustling mini-metropolises. Now, in fact, what’s
happened, because India is a democracy, is that the slums have become
incredibly powerful places politically because they have a lot of people in
them.”
Part
exhilarating love story, part eye-catching journey into the underbelly of
the so-called “maximum city” of Mumbai, part stirring tale of an Everyman’s
triumph against a harsh, cynical world, Slum dog Millionaire is a visceral,
action-packed Dickensian epic for the 21st Century. At the heart of its
lively storytelling lies the intriguing question of how anyone comes to know
the things they know about life and love. The Fox Searchlight Pictures /
Warner Bros. Pictures release the film.
The project was
initiated at Film4 who co-developed and co-financed the film with UK
Production Company Celador Films. Film4 chief Tessa Ross and Celador Films
Chairman Paul Smith acts as executive producers. The film is released in
English and Hindi.
-
By Rajesh
Kumar for CalicutNet.com
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