Slumdog Millionaire

“Slumdog Millionaire is a very Indian film, mixing together romance, crime, comedy, passion without sex, violence, and drama together in the Indian way—with an absurdly happy ending, of course” (Christie Davies). I couldn’t agree more with how the author of “Wagging the Slumdog” has described the motion picture that won eight Oscars. It was very fascinating to hear that many people in India got up early in the morning to watch the Oscar’s in real time at their house. This reminds me of when American’s get up at 3 a.m. to watch an event in the Olympics, so it is very astonishing when you see that for an event like the Oscar’s. The movie has also won many international awards from around the world. In Davies article, she shows that a majority of the population in India enjoyed the movie and how only a handful of Indian journalists and academics have given the movie bad reviews. The journalists and academics say that the movie depicts the slums of Mumbai and how that could turn off investors or land realtors, when this is actually the opposite. The movie actually shows both sides of Mumbai by showing the “dumpy” slums and the successful centers of trade, finance, and modern industry. The article also shows how this movie has come from an actual novel written by Swarup. This I feel doesn’t play a very important role in the final outcome because the overall journey of Jamal Malik’s life is more important.

The article the “The Original Amazing Indian Reality Show,” written by Bobby Ghosh shows a real-life story of two Indian boys who have took first and second in the Million Dollar Arm game show. The article says that a year before the television show the boys were throwing javelin for the national team and had basically never seen a baseball before. With the amount of money on the line and nothing to lose Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel tried out with the other 30,000 contestants. Singh was the overall winner and won $100,000 but wasn’t able to throw three consecutive pitches at 90 mph so he didn’t win the $1,000,000. After many workouts with the USC pitching coach and many classroom lessons they were ready to try-out for MLB scouts. With their first try-out being unsuccessful the second one was a charm. They both threw 90mph and were signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates. The article went on to say that they were going to compete on the single A farm team of the Pirates as relief pitchers and see where it went from there. This article was published a few years ago and I haven’t how things turned out for them. But this is a very inspirational story because these kids picked up baseball so fast and were able to be signed after only knowing the game for six months.

The thing I noticed about this movie right away that it was shot in a foreign country and it very closely depicted the struggles of the people living in the Mumbai slums. I noticed that I have never realized just how bad some of the people in these flourishing countries actually have it. I noticed this because when you watch the Travel Channel it only shows you the resorts and nice parts of a city and rarely shows you the slums or poverty stricken potions of the city. The director decided to show the slums of Mumbai because people like me coming into the movie only had seen the “nice” parts of these large cities and have rarely seen a movie show the poverty stricken parts of it. It was very eye opening and makes a person feel very sad to see all the kids living as orphans because their parents have been killed by extremists. The questions that still remain for me are as follows: Did Jamal ever get his money? What did he end up doing with all of it? Was he ever found by the gangster his brother worked for? And did he and Latika live happily ever after? One scene that I thought was funny was when Jamal’s friend locked him in the outhouse and he jumped into the defecations which was his only way out. Another part of the movie that was very emotional was when Jamal’s brother gave Latika the keys to his car and was willing to die so that his brother could have the girl he had always wanted. Overall this movie is one of the best I have ever watched and can see why it won eight Oscar’s.