slumdog

no.100 Slumdog Millionaire

Go figure, this would be film 100 of the year. Then again, when I forget to blog, I could be at 115 for all I know!

For all the hype, I totally did jump on the bandwagon. Loved what Danny Boyle did for the slums of Bombay. I found it so ironic that I felt as if I knew every step of this story. I read Maximum City, which is a fabulous non-fiction book about Bombay. Everything from stories about the underworld, diapers full of shit flying in through the window in your terribly expensive apartment, cell phones, creeping along in traffic in your brand new BWM, toilet queues, kids on the street stealing scrap metal from the airport construction sites. It was as if Bombay jumped off the page and into my living room. I guess for some, they may have seen this as a hyper-reality of life in the slums, maybe glamorizing it (if that's possible), but all the things that I've read about the city, everything was so real. I laughed at the impossible situations that most might think contrived.

Now that I've (finally) seen it, I can see why everyone went gaga. It is a great film with a great message, I think I have a different opinion as I seem to have a pretty good understanding of the city and it's people. I'd be really interested to see what my friends who are Indian and still travel back and forth to visit family have to say, as I'm sure their REAL experience in the city will lend a different view.