British director Danny Boyle’s (Trainspotting, The Beach, 28 Days Later) Slumdog Millionaire was the surprise hit of the year. Written by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty, Closer), and co-directed in India by Loveleen Tandan, the film is an adaptation of the novel Q & A by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup. Slumdog was nominated for ten Academy Awards in 2009 and won eight, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score and Best Original Song. Slumdog Millionaire is definitely a film most film fans will want to add to their personal collections.
Boyle filmed Slumdog Millionaire in India, shooting about a quarter of the film in subtitled Hindi and using a lot of local actors to tell the story. In its most basic of terms, Slumdog Millionaire is the story of a young man, a Mumbai orphan, who goes from rags to riches on the strength of his intelligence. Nearly 20-year-old Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a onetime street urchin turned gopher at a telemarketing center, has made it to the final question on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Convinced that an uneducated nobody could possibly do that well, the police interrogate him after the show breaks for the evening. Armed with the knowledge that the show’s host, Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor) believes Jamal has been cheating, the police brutally torture him. Jamal explains, one question at a time, the events in his life that gave him the answers.
These events are told in a series of flashbacks, which serves to tell us the story of Jamal’s hard-knock life. First we meet the young, energetic Jamal (Ayush Mahesh Khedekar) and his slightly older brother Salim (Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail) living in the slums of Mumbai. Theirs is a real hand to mouth existence; doing whatever they need to do to survive. At one point, the brothers take up with a sinister fellow who teaches street kids to sing for spare change and will do whatever it takes to make his kids look more pathetic and thus better earners. Almost from the start, it’s clear that the two brothers have very different personalities–Jamal is gentle and resourceful; Salim, opportunistic and harsh.
Later, they meet up with an orphaned girl named Latika (Rubina Ali), whom Jamal wants to make their third Musketeer, despite Salim’s objections. Time has passed and Latika is no longer a part of the boys’ lives. However, Jamal has never forgotten her. He and Salim are still scraping out a life on the streets; Jamal hustles tourists at the Taj Mahal and Salim gets involved with some gangsters. Soon enough (and with Salim now played by Madhur Mittal and Latika by Freida Pinto), the three young people’s lives intersect again through Javed (Mahesh Manjrekar), a cruel racketeer with a stranglehold on the slum they grew up in.
It’s during all this, that Jamal gets a shot as a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. We learn later, that Jamal’s only motivation for trying out for the show was because he new Latika would be watching and he was desperate to contact her. After Jamal tells his whole story, explaining how his life experiences coincidentally enabled him to know the answer to each question; the police inspector calls Jamal’s explanation “bizarrely plausible” and, knowing he’s not in it for the money, allows him to return to the show for the final question.
Boyle shows great skill in his ability to juggle three different timelines so well. Jamal being interrogated while watching a videotape of his first night, and Jamal’s life story leading up to this point. Boyle finds creative ways to make ordinary filmmaking devices like flashbacks seem lively and innovative. For example, as Jamal sits down to face his final question on the Millionaire set, he remembers being questioned and slapped around the night before, still reeling from it. To enhance this feeling of disorientation, Boyle has the slap occur in the present–a hand literally reaches up from under Jamal’s chair on the TV soundstage–as a segue to the flashback of when it actually happened. You’ll miss it if you blink but the effect is perfect: You feel Jamal’s confusion and the sensation that time has run together, that everything in his life is happening all at once.
This 1080p/MPEG-4 AVC effort provides an image that’s always pleasing and often stunning. At their best, various shots flaunt all the breathtaking clarity, enhanced depth of field, and vibrant color that distinguish the finest HD transfers. Beads of sweat, downy facial hairs, and clothing textures are all superbly rendered, colors possess lovely saturation, and contrast is pushed, so we get several palpable moments of 3-D pop. remains true to Boyle’s vision, which walks a fine line between gritty realism and lush romanticism and honors both approaches well.
Black levels are quite strong, and nocturnal scenes possess great amounts of detail. Whites tend to run hot, and the high contrast forces a few instances of blooming. A smattering of video noise creeps in from time to time, and there’s some break-up of fine details in long shots but neither deficiency detracts from the overall quality of this transfer. Not a single nick or scratch mucks up the image, and no edge sharpening, DNR, or other digital tinkering alters the original look of this film. This is really a terrific presentation, one that thrusts us into the action and keeps us on a tether throughout.
I found the English / Hindi 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack to be amazing. This was not a film that I had expected to be aggressive in sound, but the musical score by A. R. Rahman, the sound editing, sound design and sound effects are all top notch There are plenty of quiet moments in the film, but in a moment´s notice the soundtrack can come alive with amazing audio that showcases the Academy Award winning music. Sound emanates from all directions when the mix is allowed to wake up and there is plenty of ambient sounds to be heard throughout the film such as the sounds of the crowded slums and the exploding applause of the audience as Jamal answers each question correctly. Dialogue is fine but subtitled for the Hindi spoken parts.
Slumdog Millionaire comes packed with a decent spate of special features that both look at the making of this popular film and honor the people and culture of India.
• Audio Commentaries – Two tracks are included, the first of which features director Danny Boyle and actor Dev Patel in a spirited commentary that’s short on insight but long on enthusiasm. Boyle’s energy and passion are contagious, and it’s a treat to hear him expound on a film that means so much to him. He talks about breaking down the barriers that might prevent western audiences from embracing the film, the warmth of the Indian people, working with the child actors, filming at the Taj Mahal, and some changes between the original script and final version. Patel is a respectful sidekick, tossing in a few remarks and affirming the director’s points, but this is really Boyle’s show. The second track allows producer Christian Colson and writer Simon Beaufoy a chance to share their perspectives, but they have little of interest to offer.
• Deleted Scenes (SD, 34 minutes) – A selection of 12 deleted and extended scenes include a longer version of the film’s opening chase sequence, an additional question scene from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, more development of Jamal and Salim’s adolescent period, and a pair of heated confrontations between the two adult brothers.
• Featurette: “Slumdog Dreams: Danny Boyle & the Making of Slumdog Millionaire“ (HD, 23 minutes) – This two-part featurette includes extensive comments from Boyle, Beaufoy, and Colson, as well as remarks from the cast and lots of behind-the-scenes footage of Boyle directing in the Indian trenches. The extremes of India, the lengthy casting process, the unpredictability of shooting in Mumbai, and the film’s state-of-the-art digital photography are among the topics discussed in this slick, involving piece.
• Slumdog Cutdown (HD, 6 minutes) – A condensed version of Slumdog Millionaire presented as a music video.
• Music Video: “Bombay Liquid Dance” (SD, 3 minutes) – Daily life in Mumbai is flashily chronicled from a variety of perspectives in this instrumental music video.
• Theatrical Trailer (HD) – In addition to two trailers for Slumdog Millionaire (one American, one European), the disc includes previews for Australia, The Secret Life of Bees, Notorious, and Bride Wars.
• Featurette: “From Script to Screen: Toilet Scene” (HD, 5 minutes) – An in-depth examination of this important sequence that sets up the dynamics of a key relationship and defines essential character traits. Boyle and Beaufoy both provide great perspective as they walk us through the scene.
• ‘Manjha’: A Short Indian Film (SD, 41 minutes) – A raw, devastating, black-and-white study of lost innocence, misplaced trust, abuse, and revenge seen through the eyes of an orphaned Indian boy striving to stay alive and care for his baby sister on the streets of Mumbai.
• Digital Copy – A second disc allows you to transfer Slumdog Millionaire to a portable entertainment device via iTunes or Windows Media Player.
