Four Golden Globes – the best picture, director, screenplay and music score. Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire has drawn global attention to Mumbai slums and their grim reality, as depicted by an orphan boy struggling to make it in life. A Kaun-banega-carorpati type TV show gives him that chance to make it. And the millionaire slumboy, reunited with his girl, walks into the sunset to the music set by the Golden Globe winner A R Rahman. Slumdog (haven’t seen it yet), they say, is Oscar-class movie with a Bollywood ending.
At the award-presentation ceremony telecast the world over from Los Angeles Bollywood presence was perceptible. Shah Rukh Khan got a chance to lead Slumdog’s female interest – Freida Pinto – to the centre stage and introduce her to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, sponsors of the Golden Globe awards, and an audience comprising virtually a ‘who’s who’ of the US movie and televison.
Bollywood’s Anil kapoor was seen springing out of his chair on hearing actor-presenter Tom Cruise announce the best picture award for Slumdog Millionaire.
Simon Beaufoy was the first of the four Slumdog winners to be called on to the stage to accept his Golden Globe for making a screenplay out of Vikas Swarup’s novel – ‘Q and A’ . A Bollywood director Mahesh Manjrekar is quoted in The Hindu as saying that it was ironical no desi production house (Chopra, Johar, Screwwalla, are you reading?) took up this subject. “I wanted to do it but by then the rights were sold,” says Mahesh to The Hindu’s Ziya Us Salam. Irony was Manjrekar wound up playing gangster Javed in Danny Boyle’s Slumdog.
The director (centre), with the producer and the female lead, making a thank-you speech. And the film-maker brought on to the stage rest of his Slumdog gang, represented at the award-presentation ceremony.
The Slumdog theme and the acclaim the movie has received reminds me of Satyajit Ray’s Pathar Panchali. Both films dwell on poverty. Pathar Panchali made waves gobally in the 50s , but was no box-office hit in India. And he film came in for flak from many in mainstream cinema in Bombay. A leading actress of her times and MP, Nargis Dutt, had taken a swipe at Satyajit Ray for glorifying India’s poverty.
My Take by GVK 
This movie deserves every iota of appreciation its receiving… Its surely worth it…Strange that Bollywood directors are unable to come up with such movies based on India..One reason could be the excess “masala” that Bollywood believes in, which kind of gives a movie, a very artificial feel..
Had bought Q&A 3 years ago, never got round to finishing it. Now I will. (Review, please? 🙂 )
And I liked the few words of acceptance from AR Rahman – looking at a small piece of paper he said “there are so many written here, and I’m not sure how I’ll cover them all” – (words to this effect). He meant – the Almighty and the 1 billion Indians….
Most Hindi movies are not even shot in India! at least the parts that the crowd normally enjoys. So even if this kind of movie was made in India, the focus would not have been on the slums but the life of the millionaire.. this way lots of masala and glamour would dazzle the Indian crowd weary of seeing the slums in their every day life.