Slumdog Millionaire(贫民窟的百万富翁)经典电影英文影评

Slumdog Millionaire

（ 贫民窟的百万富翁）

2008

A

gaudy,

gorgeous

rush

of

color,

sound

and

motion,

“Slumdog

Millionaire,”

the

latest

from

the

British

shape-

shifter Danny Boyle, doesn’t travel through the lower depths, it giddily bounces from one horror to the next.

A modern fairy tale about a pauper angling to become a prince, this sensory blowout largely takes place amid the

squalor of Mumbai, India, where lost children and dogs sift through trash so fetid you swear you can smell the

discarded mango as well as its pee

l, or could if the film weren’t already hurtling through another picturesque

gutter.

Mr. Boyle, who first stormed the British movie scene in the mid-

1990s with flashy entertainments like “Shallow

Grave” and “Transpo

r

ting,” has a flair for the outré. Few ot

her directors could turn a heroin addict rummaging

inside a rank toilet bowl into a surrealistic underwater reverie, as he does in “Tran

spor

ting,” and fewer still could

do so while holding onto the character’s basic humanity. The addict, played by Ewan McG

regor, emerges from his

repulsive splish-splashing with a near- beatific smile (having successfully retrieved some pills), a terrible if darkly

funny

image

that

turns

out

to

have

been

representative

not

just

of

Mr.

Boyle’s

bent

humor

but

also

of

his

worldview: better to swim than to sink.

Swimming comes naturally to Jamal (the British actor Dev Patel in his feature-film debut), who earns a living as a

chai-wallah

serving

fragrant

tea

to

call- center

workers

in

Mumbai

and

who,

after

a

series

of

alternating

exh

ilarating and unnerving adventures, has landed in the hot seat on the television game show “Who Wants to Be

a Millionaire.” Yet while the story opens with Jamal on the verge of grabbing the big prize, Simon Beaufoy’s

cleverly kinked screenplay, adapted from a novel by Vikas Swarup, embraces a fluid view of time and space,

effortlessly shuttling between the young contestant’s past and his present, his childhood spaces and grown

-up

times. Here, narrative doesn’t begin and end: it flows and eddies —

just like life.

By all rights the texture of Jamal’s life should have been brutally coarsened by tragedy and poverty by the time he

makes

a

grab

for

the

television

jackpot.

But

because

“Slumdog

Millionaire”

is

self

-consciously

(perhaps

commercially)

framed

as

a

contemporary

fairy

tale

cum

love

story,

or

because

Mr.

Boyle

leans

toward

the

sanguine, this proves to be one of the most upbeat stories about living in hell imaginable. It’s a life that begins in a

vast, vibrant, sun-soaked, jampacked ghetto, a kaleidoscopic city of flimsy shacks and struggling humanity and

takes an abrupt, cruel turn when Jamal (Ayush Mahesh Khedekar), then an exuberant 7, and his cagier brother,

Salim (Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail), witness the murder of their mother (Sanchita Choudhary) by marauding

fanatics armed with anti-Muslim epithets and clubs.

Cast into the larger, uncaring world along with another new orphan, a shy beauty named Latika (Rubina Ali plays

the child, Freida Pinto the teenager), the three children make their way from one refuge to another before falling

prey to a villain whose exploitation pushes the story to the edge of the unspeakable. Although there’s something

undeniably fascinating, or at least watchable, about this ghastly interlude

—

the young actors are very appealing

and sympathetic, and the images are invariably pleasing even when they should not be

—

it’s unsettling to watch

these young characters and, by extension, the young nonprofessionals playing them enact such a pantomime. It

doesn’t help even if you remember

that Jamal makes it out alive long enough to have his 15 televised minutes.

It’s hard to hold onto any reservations in the face of Mr. Boyle’s resolutely upbeat pitch and seductive visual style.

Beautifully shot with great sensitivity to color by the cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, in both film and

digital video, “Slumdog Millionaire” makes for a better viewing experience than it does for a reflective one. It’s an

undeniably attractive package, a seamless mixture of thrills and tears, armchair tourism (the Taj Mahal makes a

guest

appearance

during

a

sprightly

interlude)

and

crackerjack

professionalism.

Both

the

reliably

great

Irrfan

Khan

(“A

Mighty

Heart”),

as

a

sadistic

detective,

and

the

Bollywood

star

Anil

Kapoor,

as

the

preening

game-show host, run circles around the young Mr. Patel, an agreeable enough if vague centerpiece to all this

coordinated, insistently happy chaos.

In the end, what gives me reluctant pause about this bright, cheery, hard-to-resist movie is that its joyfulness feels

more like

a filmmaker’s calculation than an honest cry from the heart about the human spirit (or, better yet, a

moral tale). In the past Mr. Boyle has managed to wring giggles out of murder (“Shallow Grave”) and addiction

(“Transpo

r

ting”), and invest even the apocalypse with a certain joie de vivre (the excellent zombie flick “28 Days

Later”). He’s a blithely glib entertainer who can dazzle you with technique and, on occasion, blindside you with

emotion, as

he does in

his underrated children’s

movie,

“Millions.” He plucked

my heartstrings in

“Slumdog

Millionaire” with well

-practiced dexterity, coaxing laughter and sobs out of each sweet, sour and false note.

No.2 Slumdog Millionaire

（贫民窟 的百万富翁）

2008

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