my first reaction to the movie was of extreme uneasiness and revulsion... and an overwhelming desire to escape once again to the world of "twilight" (the movie i watched a few hours before), to savour the sweet slow romance, to be oblivious to the stench, squalor, sordidness of slums... infact to be the oblivious of their very existence and to the fact that the world is not a very nice place to be in, if one is left all by herself to fend for... in the movie we follow the protagonist jamaal and "his two fellow musketeers" in their travails and vicissitudes, almost in a picaresque manner... imagine a life where even survival becomes a fight and only the fittest survive...others are blinded to gain alms or raised to satisfy others' lusts....
infact i concur with an excellent observation of a friend of mine when he said that had it not been for his older pragmatic (though often deceiving ) brother, jamaal may have also been preyed upon.The initial revulsion at the grossness of jamaal's passion for amitabh bachchan and the deluge of expletives wore off gradually as we travel back and forth in time to discover and marvel at each anecdote which comes along with his each correct answer... the stories gory and incredible, tear jerking and goosebumps raising!! the demonism of maman, the goon who blinded little kids seemed no different to me from the spohisticated malice of the host of the show. infact the entire world seemed to be such a wrong place to be in. And amidst all this The thing that touched me the most in the movie was jamal's unceasing love for latika, the hindu girl, for whom he walked many many extra miles..the girl for whom he dared to trespass the red light areas and even the house of a local DON.. It was very heart warming to see such lambent love even if it exists merely in literature and cinema.
Supported by a very powerful background score, this movie lived upto the expectations that were built around it. However i didn't find the usual mellifluence of Rehman in the songs of the movie. but then again, to give the devil his due, i think the songs were commensurate with the social strata it was depicting.... which brings me to yet another very disturbing question. Is it a mere coincidence that the west loves all those movie which either show india as a land of mysticism or as that of abject poverty? or are we being the victim to yet another kind of "orientalism"?? The image of the seamy side of india is being endorsed deliberately or unwittingly?? its almost like most indians believing every pakistani wearing pathani suit, chanting anti-india slogans, sitting amidst rubble and Ak-47S in dilapidated squalid buildings which have a crescent made rising from their dome. As the suave charm of islamabad is very much a reality, so is the rising middle class of india, something consipicously absent in the film. Then why is it that the west appreciates only such images which present india in a very unprepossessing light. Many of us would argue about the truth of these images and would tell me that they are a fact and not fiction....something i can't deny in even my rose-coloured image of india. my only problem is why only such images are endorsed and appreciated... all in name of realism...
All in all, the movie makes one think a number of things which one has probably shirked for so long.. it takes you right in to the middle of squalor, the poverty, the ugliness and all those things that makes a common man and not to mention the government uncomfortable. And yet the feel-good element which takes jamal from rags to riches inspite of all his travails and troubles, manages to warm us up as we join the throngs of crowd to cheer him and the invincible spirit of man. i hail the movie with both thumbs up!!
