Hollywood and Bollywood: A recipe for bliss

by Jacqueline Rogers

She is smiling in brilliant orange. Amidst the dirty streets a goddess in flowing layers of mango-colored fabric is smiling and serene. Radiance flows from the oranges, saffron’s, purples, and blues of people passing where she stands, the train station in Mumbai’s chaotic streets. But this is a world of contrast, of contradiction; this is a story of love versus the self-preservation of poverty and the poverty of self-preservation. Look up for a moment and darkness looms; anger and violence ready to destroy the warm smile, a darkly grinning brother ready to sacrifice love to fight for control of his pithy life.

For anyone who has dismissed Bollywood, reconsider with the charm it adds to Slumdog Millionaire. Slumdog Millionaire is just as colorful, dazzling, and admired as the films created in Mumbai (Bollywood is hugely popular in other parts of the world. It sold 3.6 billion tickets last year; Hollywood 2.6 billion) but its clever structure avoids many of the clichés and corniness that have long kept Bollywood movies out of American popular culture. Directors Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan seem to have tailored this hybrid of Bollywood and Hollywood for American viewers on tough times.

Charming British actor Dev Patel plays Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who is just one question away from winning a fortune of 20 million rupees on India's “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” Arrested on suspicion of cheating, he is taken to suffer in a dingy police station and tells them this incredible story, moving from the slums of Mumbai and back again for the girl he loves and keeps losing, Latika. The film moves from game-show question to flashback, leading a journey of Jamal’s tragic and vibrant life to show how he, a slumdog and chai-wallah, came to know the answers to the Millionaire show’s questions.

The story is partly predictable but its convention only comforts. Everywhere else in the film is the adventure; Boyle and Tandan manage to keep a taste of India at the film’s center yet westernize the overall production, with producer Christian Colson. The brilliant colors are pure India, as are most of the film’s young and talented stars, three for each of the main characters as the story builds from childhood to late adolescence. The strongest element in the film is the visual, and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle captures Slumdog’s playful and shadowy spirits with a vibrancy and variety of angles that doesn’t feel too contrived. The richness of the different perspectives coupled with a fun and heart-pounding music selection keeps eyes and ears dilated, eager for more life and intensity to resonate from the screen.

At times, slight tension can be felt in the attempts to reconcile Western drama/comedy and Indian Bollywood magical realism. The storyline sometimes begs a question of plausibility. Luckily, the weakest storyline moment of the film is intelligently placed in one of the more endearing montages, when the brothers magically become fluent in English while scamming Western tourists at the Taj Mahal.

Some criticism claims an irresponsible romanticism of slums and poverty, but, a bit sadly, is almost the point. It is not unlike Nike ads idealizing American black ghetto life to sell an image of rags-to-riches basketball superstars. Slumdog relies on the predestined being reassuring. It's the American dream packaged for some Indian spice. Hollywood and Bollywood, the perfect recipe for a depressed public. India still occupies a space in the American psyche as achingly raw and beautiful, magical, a land of elephants. Right now, it's what is digestible. And Boyle and Tandan made Slumdog gobble-able—like a starving pack of economically depressed wolves, we are ready to tear into anything joyful.

Bollywood films, for many Americans, have run along a thin line of simplicity that can feel insulting. But in this case, the formulaic fairytale is welcomed in the beauty and spirit of India. Slumdog Millionaire releases a sort of poignant exuberance that the American film industry has not produced in what feels like decades. Slumdog is neatly packaged bliss-in-a-box and brilliant in its energy and its timing—America sure needs something to smile about.