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Slum Voyeurism?

The director of the surprise hit 'Slumdog Millionaire' defends his film against Indian critics who say it exploits the poor.

By Fareed Zakaria | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jan 30, 2009

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  • Posted By: camilo3@msn.com @ 04/08/2009 8:34:24 PM

    I was totally surprised ! I never expected such a Great Film to come out of a City of Slum ! So realistic, yet so sublime ! I could not believe the raw impact of some of the magnificent and moving scenes from the movie, such as the jumping into the potty to come out full of ***, just to get the autograph of a Celebrity, and then the tragedy of having this inclredible feat be sold for a few ruppees by his own brother. I will never forget this scene as long as I live. But the formidable part of SlumDog is the way it show in total realism the life and death in the slums of Mumbai, all related and coming together in a seamless story of how by total coincidence he Knew the correct answer to all of the questions in the show because he had actually experienced each and every one of them. And I left the theatre thinking that in India's real life, no Millionaire winner would ever be left alive to enjoy the fortune, that he was so fortunate to be able to win.

  • Posted By: Holly deMello @ 03/09/2009 7:44:04 PM

    I went to see "Slumdog Millionaire" last night with my boyfriend. He had to escort me out of the theatre thirty minutes into the film. I was crying so hard, I couldn't bear to see anymore. Obviously, the director hasn't suffered like these children have. I know it is a fictional film, but those events are true because they do happen to a lot of children around the world continuously. Suffering is not a commodity. All or mostly all of the profit from this movie should go to the children of India. It is of no credit to anyone to have this movie praised unless it does something to help the children there now.
    To the director, unless you have lived as those children have or have grown up as they have, please don't say where they live is an exciting place. If you live there day in and day out, suffering continually, I'm not so sure you would be able to make this film so blatantly. Suffering leaves such horrible scars. If you have suffered even half as much as the children do there now, the injustices endured by the children would disable you from even filming ten minutes of your film. The emotion would be too much. Don't go into India, expose all of this and leave. Go back, take your millions and help them. It is one thing to have suffered like them and then write about it, but to take their stories and magnify them into a movie for the big screen is taking advantage of how they are forced to live.

    Do not walk away from what has been given to you. Practice true religion and that is helping those who suffer. Give what is rightfully theirs back to them so they can become all they were meant to be. Live their lives for a few years, suffer daily, and you won't even be able to watch your own movie, "Slumdog Millionaire." It would hurt too much.

  • Posted By: MichaelX @ 02/02/2009 11:52:48 AM

    The movie was crap, the director is crap, the company that produced it is crap, what part of crap, dont you get?

    • Posted By: Commonsense13 @ 02/27/2009 4:07:34 AM

      you are one full of **it buddy. go back to the toilet and do the slomdug thingy or the 'trainspotting' thingy.

  • Posted By: Commonsense13 @ 02/27/2009 4:04:13 AM

    Danny is so eloquent in his ideas about the movie. no doubt the movie has achieved such an acclaim in the world stage that no other movie could do. this is all due to the cooperation of best minds from different parts of the world. the music,direction,acting all wonderful. most of the actors in this movie are not experienced. that shows the director's sharpness. oh..btw, there was a movie called 'city of joy' with patrick swayze. it was made in the slums of calcutta. may be it is time to rent that dvd and watch it if you have not seen it already.

  • Posted By: sanjaymaharaj @ 02/24/2009 5:44:46 PM

    I cannot agree more with Danny's comments, you can leave India but India never leaves you. If we are to ever appreciate life we all need to go to India where people live everyday with so much less than what we have yet they have a smile on their face

  • Posted By: jbz7879 @ 02/24/2009 1:17:27 PM

    salaam bombay was and is much better then this average fantasy drama mix
    it showed how a wise and ancient culture has learnt to love and live with the ieequalities that civilsation creates globally as the milieu of slums and palaces exists all over -
    while sludog takes a recession hit world and like the lottery and casino junkies tries to give the deprived and greedy a sense of false hope and optimism which might look good to the bourgeois middle class pseudo intellectuals but serves really no purpose but a rather misundersood misadventure of two victimised muslim kids who are taken for a false joy ride in a stolen vehicle from the mind of mira nair
    the fact one dies in a swad of cash and the other finds it in a tele quiz is hilariously irrelevant when you see that this is trying so hard to be a moralist fable for contemporary global misery but rather is a shaky fantasy drama with an overtly flawed script too

  • Posted By: Sinibaldi @ 02/24/2009 11:12:58 AM

    At the end of a day.....

    A smiling face
    in the breath
    of a little town,
    walking alone
    and singing
    the air of a
    juvenile answer;
    I see your
    profile, a tender
    happiness of an
    open intention
    and there, at
    the end of a day,
    the light of
    a new song in
    the care of
    a moon......

    Francesco Sinibaldi

  • Posted By: flaure235 @ 02/23/2009 8:42:02 PM

    As I see on this website, we applause all the actors, producers and the crew. Is someone take the time to think of the Autor of the book that was publised few years ago? See under Vikas Swarup. He's going to get his millions but he didn't have the recognition for his imagination and creation.

  • Posted By: Anju Chandel @ 02/02/2009 4:59:52 AM

    Indian Cinema should be eternally thankful to Danny Boyle and his cast and crew for making such a wonderful movie and putting India on the forefront of international cinema - Hollywood. Slumdog Millionnaire is about the "real" Bombay - Mumbai - which is - unfortunately - shared and lived in by more than half of its population. Bombay's underbelly is a reality and all Indians - Bombayites or Mumbaikars included - should accept it. Just by frowning upon and protesting against something as challenging and positive as the theme - and even name! - of Slumdog Millionnaire is crass stupidity and height of double standards and also an attempt to gain cheap publicity at the expense of an excellent film. India should not be in denial mode about some of the horrific and stark realities of its society and people's lives. Moreover, it is not for the first time that Bombay's slums have been used in the movies' background. Most of Amitabh Bachchan's - the actor with greatest number of fan following on this earth! - movies have always had "rags-to-riches" stories. Only that those wonderful movies never got the kind of attention and appreciation that Slumdog Millionnaire is getting. (Most of them were in fact way ahead of Slumdog in all sense and aspects of a movie.) ... India should celebrate "Slumdog Millionnaire" and keep its fingers crossed for Oscars! ... Thanks, Mr. Boyle, for Slumdog Millionnaire! We are waiting for you to return with maximum Oscars possible! India's wishes are with you - a billion plus wishes!!!

    • Posted By: prachait_vora @ 02/23/2009 6:47:34 AM

      Dear friend its not really a real Bombay if you say so then you haven't seen a real mumbai......the real mumbai will be seen when you compare the things that happened at almost same time in United states and India ..the hurricane in new Orleans and mumbai floods ...without even any govt support mumbaikar handled much worser floods while with so much of govt assistance new Orleans fell in loot and anarchy ..*** seamer d people sit at one doom plucking one another property like dogs ...while men in uniform don't help the blacks just because they have a black skin... Give me one country where poor don't live ..and for your kind inforamtion the worst slums are in US and east Europe ..The Gipsy's live like animals and treated like one in white world ... but seldom hollywood and Cristian saints like Danny boile agree to it ..24 years a father raped his daughter and chained inside a hole like we Indians don't even keeps pets ... which real mumbai you are talkin about ...

  • Posted By: sridhar501 @ 01/30/2009 6:58:45 PM

    I am an Indian from Mumbai....a quick note to my fellow Indian readers...be proud of what India and Indians have achieved, and be ashamed that we have not been able to eradicate abject poverty for the last 60 years of freedom. We must take responsibility for both the riches and the rags...be honest, we call our own people worse names than Danny can think of or come up with.

    • Posted By: prachait_vora @ 02/23/2009 6:32:24 AM

      Dear friend

      poverty is part of scene in which we live in ..the world alwyas shows the opposits irrespective of hou we handle it i dont say that we can not make a better living by corrrectiung errors ... all i say is even after thjousand years we will have poverty...United states ahs poverty and slums wosrer than indian..just that tyhose poor people look white and their cloths are better ...show me a single country in the world where there is no poverty ..russians tried it they fialed even after 60 yeras of communism ...

  • Posted By: jimgreen @ 01/30/2009 5:28:18 PM

    What is important is that as Americans and Christians, we bring Jesus's love to Indians and help them escape worshipping their false Gods, and help them believe in the one true God.

    • Posted By: az.101 @ 01/31/2009 12:50:43 AM

      jimgreen-wth
      Indian culture has been around for over 3000 years, and it is one of the worlds oldest surviving religions.
      Christianity is good, but is not better OR worse than any other religions out there.

      • Posted By: prachait_vora @ 02/23/2009 6:18:09 AM

        Dear Friend
        cristainay is still a baby coampred to Hinduism ..Many thousand religions have come and gone yet hindus live..Hindus have been richest in the world... cristains talking about hindus is like crow trying to teach swans how to cross ocean ...first try to conatin thousands of docterine that have screwed up cristianity ...then try to teach thers...try to decide who are truly cristians catholics or protestants or new age cristains sucha as born again ......Hahahahahahhaha

      • Posted By: jimgreen @ 02/18/2009 1:20:18 PM

        Not 3000, but 5000 years

    • Posted By: ashdc @ 01/31/2009 1:20:25 AM

      People like Jimgreen are exactly the reason why some Indians find the scene of American handing out the movie to Jamaal objectionable. Yes Americans give money to poor in India. But it comes with a condition of converting them to Christianity. The movie shows the American handing the money, but not the next scene when Jamaal is forced to become Thomas. Or does the director himself have evangelical motives?

  • Posted By: 'Cada @ 01/31/2009 3:49:53 AM

    I have lived for several-month periods in Srinagar, Delhi, & have worked in Mumbai. While I have no Indian ancestry, I'm married to a Kashmiri. We can vouch for India's diversity; there is NO way you could begin to capture all of India's nuances in anything less than a 1000-part miniseries. We both felt the film was a bold, accurate depiction of an often-overlooked sector of society. While Jamal's story was fictional, being forced to view the world through his eyes was both illuminating and humanizing. The movie serves a greater purpose as it shouts loud and clear that all people -- even slum dwellers -- have inherent value and stories well worth listening to, whether or not more affluent Mumbaikers wish to acknowledge this. (The Dickens parallel fits so aptly, especially when you consider that Dickensian England was also blighted by a lack of mandatory childhood education or enforced child labor laws.) India is rightfully proud of its many accomplishments, and this film triggering such a mixed response there feels only right for the land of nonviolent protest. A billion-plus people are bound to have a billion-plus opinions! It's too bad a lot of people there didn't get the obvious satire of the scene with self-righteous American tourists handing Jamal a $100 bill. A good-natured jab from the British filmmakers to their American counterparts (who were not involved in the making of this film in any way) -- this scene cracked us up! (We reside in the U.S.) So many people who post commentary don't seem to realize that not all moviegoers view the film from a narrow-perspective lens. I'm particularly fond of a previous post from the guy who has not seen the movie yet feels compelled to comment. For those upset by "Slumdog Millionaire," I challenge you all to create films with perspectives more to your liking. Get them out there -- no excuses! ("Slumdog" almost went straight to dvd due to the financial collapse of its main backer.) I'm sure your story is worth telling as well; we look forward to hearing it!!! (I retyped this all into the little box after a cut-and-paste did very weird things to my apostrophes. I'm not trying to get all jimgreen on you by repeating myself, I just logged in & saw those errant question marks that could cause confusion. What is up with that guy? I hope he's not American because he makes the rest of us look bad. Most tourists aren't missionaries, for goodness' sake. One might even have become Muslim to marry a Kashmiri -- you never know.) Big congratulations to the entire "Slumdog" enterprise for generating such intriguing conversations worldwide!

    • Posted By: jimgreen @ 02/18/2009 1:19:14 PM

      American choot ko Kashmir mein chodney mein bada mazaa aata hai janaab.

  • Posted By: Mandell7 @ 02/17/2009 5:56:27 PM

    I think it is Boyle's moral responsibility to see that all the children in this film are given the opportunity to receive either a technical school or college education. Since he'll be reaping millions out of this film, he should immediately put what ever it takes into a nonrevokable trust fund for these kids. If he doesn't do it, he and everyone else whose going to wax fat on this project should be exposed by the media so that they can be blackballed and kept ever exploiting the poor again. Let's keep a spotlight on this story so that we can see exactly how the profits are distributed.

  • Posted By: capvideo84 @ 02/17/2009 4:40:20 PM

    I enjoyed this film immensely, having seen the crushing poverty of the slums of a couple of India's cities (Pune and Mumbai) first-hand. This story is a fiction, indeed, but inspiring none-the-less, and accurately depicts the conditions under which many people in India struggle. I was privileged to produce two small video documentaries for an NGO in Pune that has been working to better the lives of those living in the slums of there for over 25 years. We also used Mumbai as our port of entry and departure in 1999 and again in 2005, so I got a taste of that city.

    Above all, the thing that most pleased me about this film was the way in which it captured, in bits and pieces, the spirituality of the people of the slums. I know of no other word to use. There is a life and a force there that I have felt nowhere else. Yes, there was despair, but I also came in touch with a sense of beauty and family - a deep connectedness among all of us that came out of the most difficult of circumstances.

    The film was an eye-opener for my wife, who was not able to accompany me on those trips. It allowed her to experience a little of Mumbai beyond my stories and my own images.

  • Posted By: dudewhatthe @ 02/17/2009 4:39:27 PM

    Loved the movie...it was great to see a well done movie that had a decent ending. Just not sure with all the dancing at during the credits...odd.

  • Posted By: revive.ramesh @ 02/14/2009 11:24:19 AM

    It is really destiny isn't it. A foreign director picks up on a story like this and makes such a wonderful film. Poetic. Dickensian. Rags to riches - Romantic Rocky. Life Energy. Whatever label you want to give it it still won't do justice. It is simply a breathtakingly good film. If you have lived in Mumbai or are living there you will say all this is all around you all the time, but Danny and the team have catapulted it in a way that this slum dog will remain etched in people's memories. Well done folks. Should watch it again ...definitely. Millionaire or pauper doesn't matter. This dog will have its day

  • Posted By: mdnzm @ 02/08/2009 3:10:17 AM

    The kids hav done a marvellous job.Acting,dialogue delivery,expressions all were excellent.Anil, irfan,mahesh were not given due roles in the film.Dev patels acting & especailly his language was unimpressive.How come a slumboy suddenly starts speaking english in the perfect accent?Kudos goes to the kids ,they have done the emotional & heart moving scenes remarkably well.

  • Posted By: mpmatt09 @ 02/04/2009 11:48:39 PM

    The only thing that I would criticise about Slumdog Millionaire is that, Dev Patel didn't sound like a Mumbaiker when speaking English. He used an East African/Gujarati accent instead. Hence, I feel he should have done a bit more research on his screen character's linguistic attributes. Other than that, the film is a brave effort on many levels, in my opinion. I guess many Indian directors lack the guts, even when they are talented or moneyed, to make such a film.

  • Posted By: saj_alex@yahoo.com @ 02/02/2009 4:09:08 PM

    The movie was great, the director is brilliant, and the company that produced it is counting its lucky stars.

  • Posted By: nitin_m_v @ 01/31/2009 2:29:56 PM

    I am glad Boyle got to win the awards that it is getting. The spirit of the movie is true and from the hard mean streets of Mumbai. The many vagrant kids and destitutes happens to be real and unfortunately very much hopeless. As an Indian I am proud of the movie and can say the Bollywood is the real **** in never showing the **** that it is and we are always surrounded in. Hope the award knocks some hard sense to Indian actors and directors here. Kudos to Boyle!

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