Slumdog Millionaire
When did sentimentality become a dirty word? Didn't there used to be a distinct difference between sentimental and sappy? I guess it's been going on for some time—even some of Frank Capra's most beloved movies were ripped for their unabashed positive outlook during the Great Depression. Have we simply lost the ability to distinguish between optimism and foolishness? Or have hearts become so hardened that the most noble of human concepts—love, hope, faith—aren't allowed outside the realm of fantasy and fairy tales?
In case of the latter, think of Slumdog Millionaire as a fairy tale—Fernando Meirelles' City of God meets Capra, if you will. English director Danny Boyle, he of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later fame, goes east—far east—for his latest burst of cinematic kinetic energy. Watching Slumdog Millionaire is like a caffeine rush without the jitters or crash afterward. It's a brash, vigorous testament to the enduring power of love and responsibility everyone has to live each day as it could be their last.
Perhaps nowhere is that possibility more imminent than living in the slums of Mumbai. That's the story Jamal Malik relates while barreling through each level of the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Orphans before the age of 10, he, his brother and their friend Latika struggle to survive on the streets, stealing and scamming their next meal or meager amounts of cash. Their lives are the very embodiment of that moral connundrum of stealing bread to eat, to survive, ala Jean Valjean in Les Misérables. And Jamal, Salim and Latika are miserables.
Over the course of 10 or 15 years, the Three Musketeers, as they call themselves, are split apart, reunited, split apart again and choose three different paths: the hopeful straight-and-narrow, the easy way out and complacent despair.
If the cynics had their way, and this film were only about the cruel, unforgiving reality of life in abject poverty, then the course this story takes would be obvious. If not, if instead it celebrated the never-give-up spirit of hope and life (the kind of story we really do hear about from time to time, of real people pulling themselves out of the most awful circumstances by sheer force of will), the cynics would be waiting to tear it down for its unrealistic "sentimentality."
Well, here's to sentimentalism.* And thank goodness most people seem to be able to appreciate Slumdog Millionaire for the impractical, maudlin marvel of life-affirmation it really is.
Capra would have done it differently, but he couldn't have done it better.