With Slumdog Millionaire, the director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Shallow Grave) has applied his edgy, indie-film sensibility to a mainstream, feelgood, fairy tale-style screenplay by Simon Beaufoy (writer of The Full Monty). Together, they have managed the difficult task of creating a film that leaves you with a big smile on your face — without insulting your brain.

Taken from the novel Q&A by Vikus Swarup, this is a big, visually sumptuous and energetic film. It’s Dickens meets the Brothers Grimm, but set in India. What Boyle gives us, though, is an India that British film-makers, usually riddled with imperial guilt, rarely show us: the modern, globalised India of the fast buck, media, celebrity, call centres and high-rises. This new India is perfectly summed up when the film’s young hero, Jamal, who has just been kicked in the face, says to two American tourists who have witnessed the assault, “You wanted to see the real face of India? Well, here it is!”

Boyle doesn’t ignore the poverty and decay we know so well. On the contrary, his film celebrates the bright, colourful beauty of the slums and rubbish-infested rivers. However, he avoids western sentimentality, nostalgia or lectures about the wisdom of the East. Here in this polytheistic land, there is but one god: money.

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BACKGROUND

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BACKGROUND

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• Slumdog Millionaire

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Our young hero, Jamal (Dev Patel), however, is a romantic who believes in true love. We meet him undergoing two torturous forms of interrogation. One, set in the recent past, is at the hands of Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor), the host of the television show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. Jamal is on the brink of winning the 20m-rupee top prize. The film then flashes to the present, where he is in a police station being asked another raft of questions. Prem uses humiliation; the police use torture, convinced that Jamal has cheated. As the inspector (Irrfan Khan) says, how else could a mere “slumdog” get all the answers right? He puts on a videotape of the show, and Jamal explains how he knew the answer to each question by telling his life story. And what a story! David Copperfield, Dave Pelzer, Frank McCourt and all the other tales of awful childhoods — in fact and fiction — have nothing on this one.

We go back to when Jamal is a small boy and, with his older brother Salim, is being chased by cops through their neighbourhood slums. (Throughout their childhood, these two are always running from a series of human ogres and monsters.) In explaining one question from the police, Jamal recalls how he saw his mother killed by a mob of Hindus, then, on the run with his brother, met a little girl called Latika, with whom he fell in love.

The three of them live on a garbage dump until they are taken to an orphanage by a mysterious Fagin-like figure. Discovering his real intent, the two boys and Latika make a run for it, but she is left behind. Jamal swears that, one day, he will find her.

The brothers become artful dodgers, tricking tourists at the Taj Mahal. As they grow up, Salim (Madhur Mittal) becomes a gangster, while the lovestruck Jamal continues his search for Latika. Unable to find her a second time, he goes on the quiz show in the hope she will see him.

Slumdog Millionaire is a powerful work of drama that stems from the perfect collaboration between Beaufoy and Boyle. Beaufoy has come up with a clever screenplay. He unashamedly interweaves the tension of the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? format into his story so that, like the show’s cruel host, he can tease and torment us.

Of course, the film has a few faults. The performances of the young Jamal and Salim are perfect, but the older pair are never quite convincing. Patel seems too laconic, almost indifferent to what is happening to him, and is totally defined by his romantic longings for Latika. But Kapoor, thankfully, gives a masterclass in TV-host sadism, twisting the tension with his silence, suggestive looks and killer catch phrase: “Is that your final answer?”

There’s also a half-developed moral critique at the centre of the film that suggests there’s something corrupt at the heart of this new, globalised India. Yet the film seems to shrug its shoulders and say, so what, let’s have fun.

Still, it’s great to see Boyle, after a series of rather undistinguished films, back on great form. Not for him the languorous shots of shimmering Indian horizons or the quiet grazing of sacred animals set to the soporific, insect-like buzz of the sitar. No, he’s the prince of zip, zap, wham, bam, boom film-making, who shoots from every angle but the obvious. The action moves from hallucination to dream to nightmare, with quick forays into fantasy. It’s a glorious and great work.

15, 120 mins

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