By now everyone is talking about it… From the slums of dharavi to the CBD in LA. The Dan Boyle directed Slumdog millionaire has been a smash hit in terms of success it has achieved at the Oscars as well as various film awards all over the world.
And of course, the Indian Maestro A.R.Rahman has swept all the categories he was nominated for…Jai ho is indeed a good number, but one of the questions that immediately comes to my mind is , why this one ?? Rahman has certainly produced music which have been far better in their quality and richness starting from his first number – Chinna China Aasai.
That brings us to an interesting question – what is it that is different in Slumdog millionaire compared to thousands of movies that have been produced in India in the past ? why has SlumDog been able to achieve such a roaring success which no other film produced in India has been able to?
While the media have been talking about how novel the story line is, how brilliant the actors were – the one thing that remains true is there have been better movies produced in India. But the key difference is, because SlumDog millionaire was originally produced for an English language audience (essentially as a Hollywood movie), it was able to nominate itself for most of the categories at the Academy awards..whereas typical Indian movie can enter only in one category - “The best Foreign Language film” where the competition seems pretty tough among all the non English movies all over the world !!
I think the key difference is this – SlumDog millionaire is perhaps one of the very few Hollywood movies produced in Indian setting with a cast and story that is tellingly Indian and with a story line which has a strong indianness to it – that’s why everyone in India right from our Rashtrapathi ji has adopted this as an Indian success…
Coincidentally, last time a famous movie about India was produced in Holly wood- “Gandhi”, it also won Oscars !!
So key to note here is this – its not as if India has been lacking in talent all these years and with one SlumDog millionaire, India has announced its arrival at the world stage. Its rather the other way around, it has taken all these years for Hollywood and the rest of the world to realize the true potential and talent in India to shoot a movie with a complete Indian cast based in India– and when they did, the Oscars came along..its really as simple as that.
Another funny fact is how Politicians in India have claimed that the movie is their national pride !!! – This is like native people of the land that calls itself Hollywood today, feeling proud that they found Columbus in 1492 AD– Columbus had more to gain from the discovery, not the natives !!!
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Well said Deepak. By the way I was waiting to read your blog on this topic,wanted to know how you felt not on the film getting so many Oscars,but the way people in India are reacting to this.
ReplyDeleteThere is one line of thinking that its because the slums have been showcased, that the movie has gone to such heights! Is it so?
You have seen the movie and many of your Australian friends as well as friends from other part of the world seen it. Are they talking about the slums or do they talk about the music/technology used in picturisation/ the performance of the actors etc.
Can you comment?