PGDM 2009-2011
Business Communication II

Did Slumdog Millionaire deserve the awards it got?

Submitted to: Prof. Virupakshi Goud

Submitted by
Section C
Names:
Rachit Bhatia 2009156
Rachita Gulati 2009157

Declaration

We, Rachita Gulati and Rachit Bhatia have prepared this report solely for our BC II project. We accept that every coin has 2 facets and we have tried to consider both the perspectives for the said scenario. But then again we might have been biased towards a single perspective. Here we declare that such an instance should be seen as unintentional. While writing this report we have included certain personal opinions and so, it must not be seen as containing derogatory remarks.
Place: Nagpur Signatures:
Date: 15 December 2009

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Prof. H Virupakshi Goud, Business Communication professor, for giving us this interesting and highly debated topic for the project.

This helped us in attaining a lot of information about the film industry, films and awards. This project also helps us to sort out the differing view of people and thus giving a new line of thought to thinking. Thus, it helped us further in realizing the importance of considering all the facets of a situation before giving out a judgement.

Abstract
Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 film directed by Danny Boyle based in Mumbai, India’s most popular metropolis. The movie was critically acclaimed in the western world as well as in India. It has been raking in millions of dollars all over the world for the past year. However, in India, Slumdog Millionaire (or its Hindi version Slumdog Crorepati) wasn’t able to replicate the commercial success that it enjoyed internationally. It has been subjected to a number of criticisms, notably regarding how it portrays Indian society and the alleged exploitation of some of the actors. Whether the movie deserved the 8 Academy Awards or not is also a debatable issue. While one can say that its view of life in India is demeaning and presents only one facet of life here, it can also be said that the “rags-to-riches” story portrays the strength and resilience of the people of India. Whatever view one takes, it cannot be denied that Slumdog was a great platform for Indian artistes – it got them international acclaim and hopefully opened up doors that were once shut for them. Indian artistes can probably now hope to be taken more seriously in the international market too.
We are of the view that Slumdog Millionaire was but an (slightly) above average movie, and did not deserve the plethora of awards it got. Also, though A.R. Rahman’s music was fantastic, he’s done way better in the past and should’ve probably been recognized for some of his more notable work(though we’re sure he’s not complaining now!). Here we present our view of the movie, the awards it got and why it did or did not deserve them.

Table of Contents Introduction 6 Plot 7 Background Work 10 Release and Box Office Performance 12 North America 12 Europe 13 India 14 Asia-Pacific 15 Critical Reception 16 Awards and honours 16 Reactions from outside India 16 Awards (Nominated and Won) 18 2009 Academy Awards 18 2009 British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards. 18 2009 Golden Globe Awards 18 2009 Directors Guild of America 19 2009 Producers Guild of America Awards 19 2009 Screen Actors Guild Awards 19 2009 Writers Guild of America Awards 19 2009 MTV Movie Awards 19 Reaction from Film Critics 19 Response from Filmmakers and actors 21 Response from scholars and authors 22 Argument for Slumdog Millionaire not deserving the Awards 25 Some Viewer Reviews 30 A Counter View 31 References 33

Introduction

Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 British film directed by Danny Boyle, written by Simon Beaufoy, and co-directed in India by Loveleen Tandan. It is an adaptation of the novel Q & A (2005) by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup. Set and filmed in India, the film tells the story of a young man from the slums of Mumbai who appears on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (Kaun Banega Crorepati in the Hindi version) and exceeds people's expectations, thereby arousing the suspicions of the game show host and of law enforcement officials.
After its world premiere at Telluride Film Festival and later screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival and the London Film Festival, Slumdog Millionaire initially had a limited North American release on 12 November 2008, to critical acclaim. It later had a nationwide grand release in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2009 and in the United States on 23 January 2009. It premiered in Mumbai on 22 January 2009. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United States on 31 March 2009.
Slumdog Millionaire was nominated for ten Academy Awards in 2009 and won eight, the most for any film of 2008, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It also won seven BAFTA Awards (including Best Film), five Critics' Choice Awards, and four Golden Globes. Slumdog Millionaire has been criticized concerning language use, its portrayals of Indians and Hinduism, and the welfare of its child actors.

Plot

The film opens in medias res in Mumbai with a policeman torturing Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a former street child from the Juhu slums.
In the opening scene, Jamal has been a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, hosted by Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor). He has already won Rs.10,000,000 and has made it to the final question, for Rs. 20,000,000, scheduled for the next day. Following up on a tip-off from Kumar, who is jealous of the attention being paid to the contestant, the police now suspect Jamal of cheating.
Jamal explains that he knew the answers to most of the questions merely by chance, because of things that had happened in his life, events conveyed in a series of flashbacks to his childhood. These include the death of his mother during anti-Muslim violence (rekindling memories of the 1993 anti-Muslim attacks in the Bombay slums), and how he and his brother Salim befriended the girl Latika (played by Rubina Ali as a child). He refers to Salim and to himself as Athos and Porthos, two of the Three Musketeers. Latika is the third, whose name they never learn.
In Jamal's flashbacks, the three children are eventually discovered by Maman (Ankur Vikal) while they are living in the trash heaps. Maman is a gangster who pretends to run an orphanage in order to "collect" street children to beg money for him. Salim is groomed to become a part of Maman's operation and is told to bring Jamal to Maman in order to be blinded by acid, since blind beggars typically earn more money. Salim warns Jamal to escape just in time, and they flee, jumping onto a departing train. Latika catches up and takes Salim's hand, but Salim purposely lets go, and she is recaptured by the gangsters.
The two boys make a living, traveling on top of trains, selling goods, picking pockets, and cheating tourists at the Taj Mahal by pretending to be tour guides. Jamal eventually insists that they return to Mumbai to find Latika, which annoys Salim. They eventually locate her, discovering that she has been raised by Maman to become a prostitute whose virginity will fetch a high price. The brothers attempt to rescue her, but Maman intrudes, and in the resulting conflict, Salim draws a gun and kills him. Salim then gets a job with Javed (Mahesh Manjrekar), a rival crime lord. Salim returns to the room where the three are staying, asserts his older brother status, and orders Jamal to leave so that he can have sex with Latika. The shocked and furious Jamal attacks Salim, who draws his gun and threatens to kill his brother. Latika intervenes and tells Jamal to leave, sacrificing herself to keep him safe. With Maman's men searching for them, Salim and Latika flee to an unknown location, leaving Jamal to fend for himself.
Years later, Jamal is working as a "chai wallah" (tea server) at an Indian call center. When he is asked to cover for a co-worker, he searches the database for Salim and Latika and succeeds in finding Salim, who has become a high-ranking lieutenant in Javed's organization. When the brothers meet, Salim is remorseful but puzzled when Jamal asks the whereabouts of Latika. Annoyed and bewildered that his brother still cares about her, Salim responds that she is "long gone." He does invite Jamal to live with him, and after Jamal follows him to Javed's house, he sees Latika (Freida Pinto) there, and she notices him. He bluffs his way in, pretending initially to be a cook and then later a dishwasher.
Jamal and Latika have an emotional reunion, but elation turns to despair after Jamal discovers that Latika is Javed's mistress and tries to persuade her to leave. She rebuffs his advances and insists that he forget about her. Instead, Jamal confesses his love for her and promises to wait for her every day at 5 o'clock at the VT station. One day, while Jamal is waiting, Latika attempts to rendezvous with him, but she is recaptured by Javed's men, led by Salim. One of the men slashes her cheek with a knife as Salim drives off with her in his car, leaving Jamal behind. He loses contact with Latika when Javed moves to another house, outside of Mumbai.
Jamal tries out for the popular game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, because he knows Latika will be watching. He makes it to the final question, despite the hostile attitude of the host who feeds Jamal a wrong answer during a break; Jamal guesses that he has been misled and picks the right answer. At the end of the first day of the show, Jamal has one question left to win 20 million rupees, but the jealous host calls the police and Jamal is taken into custody, where he is tortured as the police attempt to learn how he, a simple "slumdog", could possibly know the answers to so many questions. While watching a tape of the show, question by question, Jamal tells his life story. The police inspector (Irrfan Khan) calls Jamal's explanation "bizarrely plausible" and, realizing that he is not in it for the money, allows him to return to the show for the final question.
At Javed's safe house, Latika watches the news coverage of Jamal's miraculous run on the show. Salim, anxious to make amends for his past behavior, gives Latika his phone and the keys to his car and tells her to go to Jamal and "have a good life". After she leaves, Salim fills a bathtub full of cash and sits in it, waiting for the death he knows will come when Javed discovers what he has done. The last question asked of Jamal is to name the third musketeer in The Three Musketeers. When Jamal uses his last Phone-A-Friend lifeline to call Salim, Latika barely succeeds in answering the phone in time and the two reconnect. She does not know the answer to the final question -- the three friends never learned it -- but she tells Jamal that she is safe and (in unsubtitled Hindi) starts to say "God is with you," but the phone connection cuts off in the middle of her sentence. Jamal simply guesses the correct answer (Aramis) and wins the grand prize.
Simultaneously, Javed discovers that Salim has helped Latika escape. He and his men break down the bathroom door, and Salim kills Javed, followed by Salim's death at the hand of Javed's men. With his dying breath, Salim gasps that God is great.
Later that night, Jamal and Latika meet at the railway station and share a kiss. It is then revealed that the correct answer to the opening question is "D) it is written", implying that Jamal's story is his destiny. During the closing credits, Jamal and Latika — along with hundreds of bystanders and even the younger versions of themselves — dance in the CST train station to the song "Jai Ho".

Background Work

Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy wrote Slumdog Millionaire based on the Boeke Prize-winning and Commonwealth Writers' Prize-nominated novel Q & A by Vikas Swarup. To hone the script, Beaufoy made three research trips to India and interviewed street children, finding himself impressed with their attitudes. The screenwriter said of his goal for the script: "I wanted to get (across) the sense of this huge amount of fun, laughter, chat, and sense of community that is in these slums. What you pick up on is this mass of energy."
By the summer of 2006, British production companies Celador Films and Film4 Productions invited director Danny Boyle to read the script of Slumdog Millionaire. Boyle hesitated, since he was not interested in making a film about Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, which was produced by Celador. Then Boyle learned that the screenwriter was Beaufoy, who had written The Full Monty (1997), one of the director's favourite British films, and decided to revisit the script. Boyle was impressed by how Beaufoy wove the multiple storylines from Swarup's book into one narrative, and the director decided to commit to the project. The film was projected to cost US$15 million, so Celador sought a U.S. distributor to share costs. Fox Searchlight Pictures made an initial offer that was reportedly in the $2 million range, but Warner Independent Pictures made a $5 million offer to win rights to the picture. Gail Stevens came on board to oversee casting globally. Stevens had worked with Boyle throughout his career and was well-known for discovering new talent. Meredith Tucker was appointed to cast out of the US. The film-makers then travelled to Mumbai in September 2007 with a partial crew and began hiring local cast and crew for production in Karjat. Originally appointed as one of the five casting directors in India, Loveleen Tandan has stated, "I suggested to Danny and Simon Beaufoy, the writer of Slumdog, that it was important to do some of it in Hindi to bring the film alive They asked me to pen the Hindi dialogues which I, of course, instantly agreed to do. And as we drew closer to the shoot date, Danny asked me to step in as the co-director." Boyle then decided to translate nearly a third of the film's English dialogue into Hindi. The director fibbed to Warner Independent's president that he wanted 10% of the dialogue in Hindi, and she approved of the change. Filming locations included shooting in Mumbai's megaslum and in shantytown parts of Juhu, so film-makers controlled the crowds by befriending onlookers. Filming began on 5 November 2007.
In addition to Swarup's original novel Q & A, the film was also inspired by Indian cinema. Tandan has referred to Slumdog Millionaire as a homage to Hindi commercial cinema, noting that "Simon Beaufoy studied Salim-Javed's kind of cinema minutely." Boyle has cited the influence of several Bollywood films set in Mumbai. Satya (1998) (screenplay co-written by Saurabh Shukla, who plays Constable Srinivas in Slumdog Millionaire) and Company (2002) (based on the D-Company) both offered "slick, often mesmerizing portrayals of the Mumbai underworld" and displayed realistic "brutality and urban violence." Boyle has also stated that the chase in one of the opening scenes of Slumdog Millionaire was based on a "12-minute police chase through the crowded Dharavi slum" in Black Friday (2004) (adapted from S. Hussein Zaidi's book of the same name about the 1993 Bombay bombings). Deewaar (1975), which Boyle described as being "absolutely key to Indian cinema", is a crime film based on the Bombay gangster Haji Mastan, portrayed by Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan, whose autograph Jamal seeks at the beginning of Slumdog Millionaire. Anil Kapoor noted that some scenes of the film "are like Deewaar, the story of two brothers of whom one is completely after money while the younger one is honest and not interested in money." Boyle has cited other Indian films as influences in later interviews. The rags-to-riches, underdog theme was also a recurring theme in classic Bollywood movies from the 1950s through to the 1980s, when "India worked to lift itself from hunger and poverty." Other classic Bollywood tropes in the film include "the fantasy sequences" and the montage sequence where "the brothers jump off a train and suddenly they are seven years older".
Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan, the host of the final series of Kaun Banega Crorepati (the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?) which aired before filming had begun on Slumdog Millionaire, was initially offered the role of the show's host in the film, but turned it down. The role is played by another Bollywood star, Anil Kapoor. Paul Smith, the executive producer of Slumdog Millionaire and the chairman of Celador Films, had previously owned the international rights to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Release and Box Office Performance

In August 2007, Warner Independent Pictures acquired the North American rights and Pathé the international rights to distribute Slumdog Millionaire theatrically. However, in May 2008, Warner Independent Pictures was shut down, with all of its projects being transferred to Warner Bros., its parent studio. Warner Bros. doubted the commercial prospects of Slumdog Millionaire and suggested that it would go straight to DVD without a U.S. theatrical release. In August 2008, the studio began searching for buyers for various productions, to relieve its overload of end-of-the-year films. Halfway through the month, Warner Bros. entered into a pact with Fox Searchlight Pictures to share distribution of the film, with Fox Searchlight buying 50% of Warner Bros.'s interest in the movie and handling U.S. distribution.
Following the film's success at the 81st Academy Awards, the film topped the worldwide box office (barring North America), grossing $16 million from 34 markets in the week following the Academy Awards. Worldwide, the film has currently grossed over $377 million.
North America
Slumdog Millionaire was first shown at the Telluride Film Festival on 30 August 2008, where it was positively received by audiences, generating "strong buzz". The film also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on 7 September 2008, where it was "the first widely acknowledged popular success" of the festival, winning the People's Choice Award. Slumdog Millionaire debuted with a limited North American release on 12 November 2008, followed by a nationwide release in the United States on 23 January 2009.
After debuting on a Wednesday, the film grossed $360,018 in 10 theatres in its first weekend, a strong average of $36,002 per theatre. In its second weekend, it expanded to 32 theatres and made $947,795, or an average of $29,619 per theatre, representing a drop of only 18%. In the 10 original theatres that it was released in, viewership went up 16%, and this is attributed to strong word-of-mouth. The film expanded into wide release on 25 December 2008 at 614 theatres and earned $5,647,007 over the extended Christmas weekend. Following its success at the 81st Academy Awards, the film's takings increased by 43%, the most for any film since Titanic. In the weekend of 27 February to 1 March, the film reached its widest release at 2,943 theatres. The film has grossed over $140 million at the North American box office.
The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United States on 31 March 2009. The film opened at #2 in the DVD sales chart, making $14.16m off 842,000 DVD units. As of 12 November 2009, an estimated 1,964,962 DVD units have been sold, translating to $31.32m in revenue. This figure does not include Blu-ray sales/DVD rentals. It had previously been announced that 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment would be starting a new marketing program with two versions of each release: a stripped-down minimal version for the rental market, and a traditional full version with "bonus extra" features, such as commentary and "making of" material for the retail market. The release production was mixed up; some full versions were shipped in rental cases, and some retail versions were missing the extras despite their being listed on the outside of the box. Public apologies were issued by Fox and Amazon.
Europe
The film was released in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2009, and opened at #2 at the UK box office. The film reached #1 in its second weekend and set a UK box office record, as the film's takings increased by 47%. This is the "biggest ever increase for a UK saturation release," breaking "the record previously held by Billy Elliot's 13%." This record-breaking "ticket surge" in the second weekend came after Slumdog Millionaire won four Golden Globes and received eleven BAFTA nominations. The film grossed £6.1 million in its first eleven days of release in the UK. The takings increased by another 7% the following weekend, bringing the film's gross up to £10.24 million for its first seventeen days in the UK, and up to £14.2 million in its third week.
As of 20 February 2009, the film's UK box office gross was £22,973,110, making it "the eighth biggest hit at UK cinemas of the past 12 months." In the week ending 1 March 2009, following its success at the 81st Academy Awards where it won eight Oscars, the film returned to #1 at the UK box office, grossing £26 million as of 2 March 2009. As of 17 May 2009, the total UK gross was over £31.6 million. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on 1 June 2009.
The film's success at the Academy Awards led to it seeing large increases in takings elsewhere in Europe the following week. Its biggest single country increase was in Italy, where it was up 556% from the previous week. The takings in France and Spain also increased by 61% and 73% respectively. During the same week, the film debuted in other European countries with successful openings: in Croatia it grossed $170,419 from 10 screens, making it the biggest opening there in the last four months; and in Poland it opened in second place with a gross of $715,677. The film was released in Sweden on 6 March 2009 and in Germany on 19 March 2009.
India
In India, the premiere of Slumdog Millionaire took place in Mumbai on 22 January 2009 and was attended by major personalities of the Indian film industry, with more than a hundred attending this event. A dubbed Hindi version, Slumdog Crorepati (स्लमडॉग करोड़पति), was also released in India in addition to the original version of the film. Originally titled Slumdog Millionaire: Kaun Banega Crorepati, the name was shortened for legal reasons. Loveleen Tandan, who supervised the dubbing, stated, "All the actors from the original English including Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan and Ankur Vikal dubbed the film. We got a boy from Chembur, Pradeep Motwani to dub for the male lead Dev Patel. I didn't want any exaggerated dubbing. I wanted a young unspoilt voice."
Fox Searchlight released 351 prints of the film across India for its full release there on 23 January 2009. It earned Rs. 2,35,45,665 in its first week at the Indian box office, or $2.2 million according to Fox Searchlight. Though not as successful as major Bollywood releases in India during its first week, this was the highest weekend gross for any Fox film and the third highest for any Western release in the country, trailing only Spider-Man 3 and Casino Royale. In its second week, the film's gross rose to Rs. 3,04,70,752 at the Indian box office.
A few analysts have offered their opinions about the film's performance at the Indian box office. Trade analyst Komal Nahta commented, "There was a problem with the title itself. Slumdog is not a familiar word for majority Indians." In addition, trade analyst Amod Mehr has stated that with the exception of Anil Kapoor, the film lacks recognisable stars and that "the film... is not ideally suited for Indian sentiment." A cinema owner commented that "to hear slum boys speaking perfect English doesn't seem right but when they are speaking in Hindi, the film seems much more believable." The dubbed Hindi version, Slumdog Crorepati, did better at the box office, and additional copies of that version were released. Following the film's success at the 81st Academy Awards, the film's takings in India increased by 470% the following week, bringing its total up to $6.3 million that week. As of 15 March 2009, Slumdog Crorepati has grossed Rs. 15,86,13,802 at the Indian box office.

Asia-Pacific
The film's success at the Academy Awards led to it seeing large increases in takings in the Asia-Pacific region. In Australia, the takings increased by 53%, bringing the film up to second place there. In Hong Kong, the film debuted taking $1 million in its opening weekend, making it the second biggest opening of the year there. The film was released in Japan on 18 April 2009, South Korea on 19 March 2009, China on 26 March 2009, Vietnam on 10 April 2009, and 11 April 2009 in the Philippines.
In particular, the film was a major success in East Asia. In the People's Republic of China, the film grossed $2.2 million in its opening weekend (27–29 March). In Japan, the film grossed $12 million, the most the film has grossed in any Asian country.

Critical Reception
Awards and honours
Slumdog Millionaire is highly acclaimed, named in the top ten lists of various newspapers. On 22 February 2009, the film won eight out of ten Academy Awards for which it was nominated, including the Best Picture and Best Director. It is only the eighth film ever to win eight Academy Awards and the eleventh Best Picture Oscar winner without a single acting nomination.
The film also won seven of the eleven BAFTA Awards for which it was nominated, including Best Film; all four of the Golden Globe Awards for which it was nominated, including Best Drama Film; and five of the six Critics' Choice Awards for which it was nominated.
The much acclaimed title sequence has been honoured by a nomination at the presigious 2009 Rushes Soho Shorts Festival in the 'Broadcast Design Award' category in competition with the likes of the Match of the Day Euro 2008 titles by Aardman and two projects by Agenda Collective.
Reactions from outside India
Slumdog Millionaire has been critically acclaimed in the Western world. As of 11 November 2009, Rotten Tomatoes has given the film a 93% rating with 196 fresh and 14 rotten reviews. The average score is 8.2/10. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 86, based on 36 reviews. Movie City News shows that the film appeared in 123 different top ten lists, out of 286 different critics lists surveyed, the 3rd most mentions on a top ten list of any film released in 2008.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times gave the film 4 out of 4 stars, stating that it is, "a breathless, exciting story, heartbreaking and exhilarating." Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern refers to Slumdog Millionaire as, "the film world's first globalized masterpiece." Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post argues that, "this modern-day "rags-to-rajah" fable won the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year, and it's easy to see why. With its timely setting of a swiftly globalizing India and, more specifically, the country's own version of the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" TV show, combined with timeless melodrama and a hardworking orphan who withstands all manner of setbacks, "Slumdog Millionaire" plays like Charles Dickens for the 21st century." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times describes the film as "a Hollywood-style romantic melodrama that delivers major studio satisfactions in an ultra-modern way" and "a story of star-crossed romance that the original Warner brothers would have embraced, shamelessly pulling out stops that you wouldn't think anyone would have the nerve to attempt anymore." Anthony Lane of the New Yorker stated, "There is a mismatch here. Boyle and his team, headed by the director of photography, Anthony Dod Mantle, clearly believe that a city like Mumbai, with its shifting skyline and a population of more than fifteen million, is as ripe for storytelling as Dickens's London. At the same time, the story they chose is sheer fantasy, not in its glancing details but in its emotional momentum. How else could Boyle get away with assembling his cast for a Bollywood dance number, at a railroad station, over the closing credits? You can either chide the film, at this point, for relinquishing any claim to realism or you can go with the flow—surely the wiser choice. "Colm Andrew of the Manx Independent was also full of praise, saying the film "successfully mixes hard-hitting drama with uplifting action and the Who Wants To Be a Millionaire show is an ideal device to revolve events around". Several other reviewers have described Slumdog Millionaire as a Bollywood-style "masala" movie, due to the way the film combines "familiar raw ingredients into a feverish masala" and culminates in "the romantic leads finding each other."
Other critics offered more mixed reviews. For example, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film three out of five stars, stating that "despite the extravagant drama and some demonstrations of the savagery meted out to India's street children, this is a cheerfully undemanding and unreflective film with a vision of India that, if not touristy exactly, is certainly an outsider's view; it depends for its full enjoyment on not being taken too seriously." He also pointed out that the film is co-produced by Celador, who own the rights to the original Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and claimed that "it functions as a feature-length product placement for the programme." A few critics also panned it. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle states that, "Slumdog Millionaire has a problem in its storytelling. The movie unfolds in a start-and-stop way that kills suspense, leans heavily on flashbacks and robs the movie of most of its velocity.... The whole construction is tied to a gimmicky narrative strategy that keeps Slumdog Millionaire from really hitting its stride until the last 30 minutes. By then, it's just a little too late." Eric Hynes of IndieWIRE called it "bombastic", "a noisy, sub-Dickens update on the romantic tramp's tale" and "a goofy picaresque to rival Forrest Gump" in its morality and romanticism.

Awards (Nominated and Won)

Slumdog Millionaire was nominated for (and won), and won a whole lot of awards. The more significant of these were:
2009 Academy Awards * Won: Best Picture * Won: Best Director – Danny Boyle * Won: Best Original Score – A. R. Rahman * Won: Best Original Song – "Jai Ho", by A. R. Rahman (music) & Gulzar (lyrics) * Won: Best Adapted Screenplay – Simon Beaufoy * Won: Best Cinematography – Anthony Dod Mantle * Won: Best Film Editing – Chris Dickens * Won: Best Sound Mixing – Resul Pookutty, Richard Pryke, Ian Tapp * Nominated: Best Sound Editing – Tom Sayers (lost to The Dark Knight) * Nominated: Best Original Song – "O... Saya", by A. R. Rahman & M.I.A. (lyrics)
2009 British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards. * Won: Best Film * Won: Best Director – Danny Boyle * Won: Best Adapted Screenplay – Simon Beaufoy * Won: Best Film Music - A.R. Rahman * Won: Best Cinematography - Anthony Dod Mantle * Won: Best Editing - Chris Dickens * Won: Best Sound - Glenn Freemantle, Resul Pookutty, Richard Pryke, Tom Sayers, Ian Tapp * Nominated: Outstanding British Film * Nominated: Best Leading Actor – Dev Patel * Nominated: Best Supporting Actress - Freida Pinto * Nominated: Best Production Design - Mark Digby, Michelle Day
2009 Golden Globe Awards * Won: Best Motion Picture - Drama * Won: Best Director - Motion Picture - Danny Boyle * Won: Best Screenplay - Simon Beaufoy * Won: Best Original Score - A. R. Rahman
2009 Directors Guild of America * Won: Best Director - Danny Boyle
2009 Producers Guild of America Awards * Won: Best Theatrical Picture
2009 Screen Actors Guild Awards * Won: Best Cast – Rubiana Ali, Tanay Chheda, Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala, Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Ayush Mahesh Khedekar, Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar, Madhur Mittal, Dev Patel, Freida Pinto * Nominated: Best Supporting Actor - Dev Patel
2009 Writers Guild of America Awards * Won: Best Adapted Screenplay - Simon Beaufoy
2009 MTV Movie Awards * Nominated: Best Movie * Nominated: Breakthrough Performance Female - Freida Pinto * Nominated: Breakthrough Performance Male - Dev Patel * Nominated: Best Kiss - Freida Pinto, Dev Patel * Nominated: Best WTF Moment - Ayush Mahesh Khedekar * Nominated: Best Song From a Movie - "Jai Ho", by A. R. Rahman

Reaction from Film Critics
The film received positive reviews from many Indian film critics, though some were negative and others mixed. According to All Bollywood, the film has an average rating of 81% based on an aggregate of 25 reviews from Indian film critics. It was praised by Nikhat Kazmi of the Times of India who referred to Slumdog Millionaire as "a piece of riveting cinema, meant to be savoured as a Cinderella-like fairy tale, with the edge of a thriller and the vision of an artist." She also argued against criticism of the film, stating: "it was never meant to be a documentary on the down and out in Dharavi. And it isn't. " Renuka Vyavahare of Indiatimes suggested that "the film is indeed very Indian" and that it is "one of the best English films set in India and revolving around the country’s most popular metropolis Mumbai." Kaveree Bamzai of India Today called the film "feisty" and argued that it is "Indian at its core and Western in its technical flourish." Anand Giridharadas argued in The New York Times that the film has a "freshness" which "portrays a changing India, with great realism, as something India long resisted being: a land of self-makers, where a scruffy son of the slums can, solely of his own effort, hoist himself up, flout his origins, break with fate." Giridharadas also called the film "a tribute to the irrepressible self." Poorna Shetty stated in the The Guardian that "Boyle's depiction of Mumbai is spot on." She further stated that the film displays the "human aspect of the slums and the irrepressible energy and life force of the place" and offers "a breathing snapshot of the city that is always stripped of its warmth when depicted in the news." Khalid Mohamed gave the film a rave review and a 5-star rating.
Others were more critical of the film. One common complaint was directed towards Patel's use of British English which was never explained within the context of the film. In referring to this issue, Mukul Kesavan of The Telegraph (Kolkata) stated that the film is "a hybrid so odd" (due to the decision to have the first third in Hindi and the remainder in English) "that it becomes hard for the Indian viewer to ... suspend disbelief" and that "the transition from child actors who in real life are slum children to young actors who are, just as clearly, middle-class anglophones is so abrupt and inexplicable that it subverts the ‘realism’ of the brilliantly shot squalor in which their lives play out." Furthermore, Gautaman Bhaskaran argued that although the film was shot in India, it is not Indian in character. He questioned the "euphoria in India" after the film's release there, arguing that with a few exceptions, "there is nothing Indian about this film." He concluded that the film has "very little substance" and is "superficial and insensitive."
A more contentious argument lay in the assertion that Indians have already made better and more realistic films about poverty and corruption in India. Subhash K. Jha (author of The Essential Guide to Bollywood) remarked that this territory has already been covered by Indian filmmakers (Mira Nair in Salaam Bombay and Satyajit Ray in the Apu Trilogy). Similarly, Soutik Biswas of the BBC argued that Slumdog Millionaire is an imitation of Indian films that have been "routinely ignored," suggesting that "if you are looking for gritty realism set in the badlands of Mumbai, order a DVD of a film called Satya by Ramgopal Verma. The 1998 feature on an immigrant who is sucked into Mumbai's colourful underworld makes Slumdog look like a slick, uplifting MTV docu-drama."Matthew Schneeberger, an American working as a journalist in India, opined:
"Say an Indian director travelled to New Orleans for a few months to film a movie about Jamal Martin, an impoverished African American who lost his home in Hurricane Katrina, who once had a promising basketball career, but who -- following a drive-by shooting -- now walks with a permanent limp, whose father is in jail for selling drugs, whose mother is addicted to crack cocaine, whose younger sister was killed by gang-violence, whose brother was arrested by corrupt cops, whose first born child has sickle cell anaemia, and so on. The movie would be widely panned and laughed out of theatres."
Finally, a fourth argument is that a "happy ending" film about slum-dwellers is inherently misleading. For example, Sudip Mazumdar of Newsweek wrote:
"People keep praising the film's 'realistic' depiction of slum life in India. But it's no such thing. Slum life is a cage. It robs you of confidence in the face of the rich and the advantaged. It steals your pride, deadens your ambition, limits your imagination and psychologically cripples you whenever you step outside the comfort zone of your own neighborhood. Most people in the slums never achieve a fairy-tale ending."
Response from Filmmakers and actors
In an interview with NDTV after the Oscar awards, actor and filmmaker Aamir Khan stated that "the film didn't work for me" and that "for someone who lives here, the film goes over the top." However, he did praise India's Oscar-winning Resul Pookutty in the interview as well as India's Oscar-winners A. R. Rahman and Gulzar in his personal blog. Director Deepa Mehta also noted in an interview that while Slumdog Millionaire's Oscar win was, "good for the team, the film is an OK one...it's more a Western than Indian film."
Some have questioned its qualifications as an Oscar winner. Mahesh Manjrekar who portrayed the gangster Javed in Slumdog Millionaire stated that the film, "was an amusing phenomenon! Everybody came out of the woodwork all of a sudden. It was humorous. It was like a team had won a match and the extras in the stand were dancing more than the actual Team XI. But, Slumdog... did some good things for us. It was more Hindi than any of our Hindi films. If any Indian filmmaker would’ve made it, the critics would’ve termed it a ‘convenient film’. I’m sad that Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par didn’t make it to the final round of the Oscars. I thought it to be way better than Slumdog..., without taking away anything from Boyle and the kids. But, Indian movies are underestimated there." Filmmaker Mrinal Sen also questioned whether winning the Oscar qualifies Slumdog Millionaire as a good film, stating that other great cinematic performers and filmmakers have not won the Oscar.
Others stated that the film touched upon themes already explored by Indian filmmakers. Director and filmmaker Priyadarshan criticized Slumdog Millionaire as a "mediocre version of those commercial films about estranged brothers and childhood sweethearts that Salim-Javed used to write so brilliantly in the 1970s." He also stated that he viewed the film at the Toronto Film Festival and that "the Westerners loved it. All the Indian[s] hated it. The West loves to see us as a wasteland, filled with horror stories of exploitation and degradation. But is that all there is to our beautiful city of Mumbai?"
Finally, some have claimed that the film unleashed a backlash against Indians. Filmmaker Aadesh Shrivastava claimed that its release in the United States led to the word "slumdog" being used as a slur against Indian Americans, criticizing the positive reaction by some Indians towards what he regarded as a film that directly attacks and insults India. Response from scholars and authors
Author and critic Salman Rushdie has responded negatively to both the film Slumdog Millionaire and the novel on which it is based, Q & A. In his essay on film adaptations, "A Fine Pickle," Rushdie argues that the plot of Swarup's novel is "a patently ridiculous conceit, the kind of fantasy writing that gives fantasy writing a bad name. It is a plot device faithfully preserved by the film-makers, and lies at the heart of the weirdly renamed Slumdog Millionaire. As a result the film, too, beggars belief." He made similar statements about Slumdog Millionaire in a talk given at Emory University, arguing that its plot "piles impossibility on impossibility," and in an earlier interview with The New York Times, where he conceded that he found the film "visually brilliant. But I have problems with the story line.... It just couldn’t happen. I’m not averse to magic realism but there has to be a level of plausibility, and I felt there were three or four moments in the film where the storyline breached that rule." Rushdie also blasted Boyle's admission that he made the film in part because he was unfamiliar with India, challenging Boyle to imagine "an Indian film director making a movie about New York low-life and saying that he had done so because he knew nothing about New York and had indeed never been there. He would have been torn limb from limb by critical opinion. But for a first world director to say that about the third world is considered praiseworthy, an indication of his artistic daring. The double standards of post-colonial attitudes have not yet wholly faded away."
Some critics have suggested that the film is an imitation of "homegrown" Indian products. Radha Chadha, co-author (with Paul Husband) of The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia's Love Affair with Luxury, argued that while Slumdog Millionaire is entertaining, it is still a "masala film," the kind of Bollywood product which Indians grow up watching. As to its popularity in the West, she further suggested that what is "ordinary" (in terms of film genre) for an Indian audience "is extraordinary for the world" and that "the mesmerizing soft power of Bollywood which has kept a billion Indians enthralled for decades is touching the rest of the world." Priya Joshi, an associate professor of English at Temple University, argued that the film's indebtedness to Bollywood cinema runs far deeper than the happy ending: "In the same way that Cinema Paradiso paid homage to the transformative power of Hollywood movies of the 1940s, Slumdog testifies to the power of Bollywood's blockbusters from the 1970s, and it's no accident that the first question on the quiz show is about the 1973 hit Zanjeer." Ananda Mitra, professor of communication at Wake Forest University, described Slumdog Millionaire as a modern-day retelling of 1970s Bollywood films, citing Nasir Hussain's Yaadon Ki Baraat (1973) in particular. Others have echoed the critiques of Mukul Kesavan and Aamir Khan above concerning language use. For example, Smitha Radhakrishnan, assistant professor of sociology at Wellesley College, noted in UCLA's online Asia Pacific Arts journal that although the film offers "an action-packed, devastating, intriguing, and oddly beautiful world," it also contains notable "slip-ups," of which the "most glaring was the language. Despite the plausible explanation that Jamal and Salim picked up English, posing as tour guides at the Taj Mahal, it is highly implausible that they would come out of that experience speaking perfect British English, as Dev Patel does in portraying the grown-up Jamal. It's highly implausible that he would speak to Latika and Salim in English as an adult too."
Still other critics focused on the film's lack of realism. Professor Vrinda Nabar, the former chair of English at the University of Mumbai, argued that the film ignores the "complexity" of Mumbai as "a city in which sensitivity coexists with despair, commitment with indifference, activism with inaction, and humanism with the inhumane." Shyamal Sengupta, a professor of film studies at the Whistling Woods International Institute for Films, Media, Animationa and Media Arts in Mumbai, criticized the film for its stereotypical portrayals of Indians by calling it a "white man's imagined India. It's not quite snake charmers, but it's close. It's a poverty tour." Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava noted critically in The New York Times that the film misrepresents and stereotypes the Dharavi slum in Mumbai.
Professor Mitu Sengupta, in the Department of Politics & Public Administration at Ryerson University in Toronto, criticized the way in which Mumbai's poor were depicted, stating:
"In the end, Slumdog presents a profoundly dehumanizing view of the poor, with all its troubling political implications. Since there are no internal resources, and none capable of constructive voice or action, all 'solutions' must arrive externally. After a harrowing life in an anarchic wilderness, salvation finally comes to Jamal in the form of an imported quiz-show, which he succeeds in thanks only to 'destiny.' Must other unfortunates, like the stoic Jamal, patiently await their own destinies of rescue by a foreign hand? While this self-billed 'feel good movie of the year' may help us 'feel good' that we are among the lucky ones on earth, it delivers a patronizing, colonial and ultimately sham statement on social justice for those who are not."

Argument for Slumdog Millionaire not deserving the Awards
Slumdog Millionaire is raking millions of dollars worldwide and is supposed to make Indians proud having got so many awards.
What is shocking is that this movie is in the top 34 movies of all time in IMDB! This is definitely one of the most inconsistent movies that I have ever seen.
The only reason why this movie is a hit is because it exaggerates incredible things. This is definitely a very unrealistic movie. The thing with Americans is that, like all out going individuals, they too want to see and experience exotic and new events in their life. Now, the India that is depicted in the movie is totally not true and yet it is easy for foreigners to believe that this how India is at this moment.
Take for example the Movie Borat. This supposedly humorous movie made lots of money in the US. The lead in the movie is from Kazakhstan a country about 99% in the world does not know where it is located in the map. So the lead in the movie goes about saying stuff about Kazakhstan and is portrayed as a sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic. There are too many implied ridicules about Kazakhs. The point is that this makes a believable parody and it blatantly denigrates Kazakhstan. The thing is that since nobody knows where Kazakhstan is there will be no end to the amount of fiction that you can create. I wonder if the lead in the movie Borat was depicted as hailing from New Zealand, or Australia or England, it would have the same impact on the American audiences. Here also the selling point is the exoticness of Kazakhstan which got the approval from the Americans.
No wonder Wikipedia says this about Borat:
“Despite a limited initial release in the United States, the satire was a critical and commercial success. Cohen won the 2007 Golden Globe Award for Best Actor: Musical or Comedy, as Borat, while the film was nominated for Best Motion Picture in the same category. Borat was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 79th Academy Awards.”
No wonder Slum Dog is getting the same reception as well. This misrepresentation of reality so endeared the movie to the Americans that they went blind to the faults glaring out from the movie.
This movie is not only inconsistent but also illogical. For example an answer for the show, “Who wants to be a millionaire” is Benjamin Franklin. And yet a child beggar in the slums of Mumbai who is blind knows Benjamin Franklin on the dollar note. Of all the possibilities, imagine the odds of a beggar knowing that!
Anil Kapoor is shown being concerned that a Slum Dog gets away with so much money. Why does he even care. He acts as if he has to give the money out of his own pocket! He is just an anchor and has got nothing to lose even if Slum Dog wins or loses and yet he misleads Jamal into picking the wrong answer.
Jamal loves the girl of his dreams, that is fine. Yet somehow, even after the girl sleeps with his own brother he still cherishes her!
If you see the top movies in IMDB the most noticeable feature present is consistency in characterization. His brother is shown to be selfish, cunning and sick in the beginning. Yet, he turns a new leaf suddenly and decides to take his own life for the sake of his brothers’ girl friend.
And Jamal himself, he is shown to be very street smart and determined as shown in one scene where he wades through a pile of human crap just to get an autograph from Big B Mr Amitabh Bhachan. Yet, he suddenly turns innocent and falters through every question in the contest.
Inspite of all these glaring holes in the weak script, just because it is getting the lime light in the US many Indians continue to chant that this is as an excellent movie. No wonder then, when the famous Swami Vivekananda was questioned why he went to the US to preach Hinduism when he could have done so in India itself, he replied that it would create a reaction back at home. No wonder then that when his greatness was acknowledged in the Parliament of Religions, immediately he was hailed as a Supreme teacher back in India.
Similarly, when Rabindranath Tagore composed Gitanjali, he was not appreciated by fellow Indians and yet when he won the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature immediately guests started pouring in saying that his poetry was beautiful. Rabindranath Tagore gave them a piece of his mind to them at that time!
We are exactly like Jamal and his cohorts in the movie who become very happy when they are treated with lots of food and fun by the beggar mafia don. Jamal says, “He must be a saint!”. In the same way Danny Boyle and his mates are treating India to the BAFTA awards or so on and we are becoming happy not understanding that all that is really happening is that shit load of money is being made by them for depicting India’s poverty in an unrealistic way.
Americans are shown as being nice who even give away 100$ after getting their car stolen. This is narcissism at its best.
If there is any Indian who thinks that this movie has not shown India in a poor light then consider these statements made by people from other countries taken from various forums:
After watching this does anybody want to go to india?
Not even for a visit. People call it a “poverty tour.” Although it does highlight the “new India,” it does largely depict India as a terrible place to live–with corrupt cops, and criminals that blind children for profit.
Another viewer opines:
The fact of the matter is nobody in their right mind would want to go to India after how it is shown in Slumdog Millionaire.
The other two posters are Indians who are trying to have their cake and eat it at the same time. They are saying to us that this film is just a fiction and thus it’s ok to set it in slums etc and misrepresent here and there. We are saying that this is going to create a bad image of India. Just like Temple of Doom did. You and many have confirmed that.
They just don’t know how media works. It doesn’t make a difference if it is fiction or non-fiction, the selection of details has an influence on the viewer.
It is not surprising that this movie is a low budget one and I can wager a Million dollars if I have them, that this movie could have been shot in just 30 days. There is absolutely no substance in this movie.
One final million dollar question that still lingers is why? Why did jamal not walk away with the money when he already won so many millions. It’s not as if he is a well educated youth who can try and get away with luck. He is an uneducated smart ass. When there was no logical reason to continue and risk losing everything, WHY did he do it? Surely he would not have expected to get the remaining questions mysteriously right. Even with all the luck that unrealistically helped him get this far in the show!
If this movie actually wins an Oscar for the best picture, be sure that for the first time in the American movie history a totally unworthy movie has been awarded one of the most coveted award that often times is denied to the best of the best.
And one last point: The way Salim was portrayed towards the ending of the movie is highly reminiscent of scenes from “The City of God.” How original is that?
However AR Rahman’s score is commendable and deserves an Oscar!
This movie, like others before it, presents a voyeuristic look at the Third World’s poor and vulnerable. There was no sense of history, no glimpse of peoples’ struggles and really no dignity.
The big screen shuffled its images in a vacuum.
Staying in India, we’ve all seen quite a bit of slums, poverty and destitution around.
We’ve even seen how an open-air, wood-platform, makeshift toilet seat actually works. We have a feeling none of the moviemakers experienced the thick of it, though it plays a comic part in the film.
But the comedy doesn’t work because it’s grotesque, as is much of the film: filled with violence, horror, lies and distortions.
For instance, the handsome movie superstar would never get off his helicopter and sign an autograph for a faeces-smeared poor kid who somehow rubbed past the throngs of the adoring crowd. No way — it’s a lie. And that’s why it’s really horrible.
Yes, it’s OK to show poverty, show disparity. That’s fine, even more than fine. But show it in a real way. Don’t leave its causes unexplored. Don’t raise false hope.
And yes, it’s fine to show a communal riot scene. Of course, Hindu fascists in Mumbai slaughtered Muslim slum dwellers after riots broke out when Hindu nationalists destroyed the Babri mosque in 1992.
But few Western viewers, and few of the Hollywood elite who get to vote for the Oscars, had any clue about the barbarity they were witnessing. Out of nowhere, the protagonist’s mom and neighbors are rounded up and butchered. Riots in India don’t quite happen that way.
The incomprehensibility of the film reaches its apex in the “ Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” game itself. Take one example: An American tourist couple visits the Taj Mahal and to display their generosity, they give the protagonist a $100 bill for a tip, and this helps him to learn which American figure is printed on the money — an answer he needs to keep going in the contest. Talk about preposterous!
At times, one feel sorry for the young performers who poured their hearts out on and off camera, and were not properly compensated for their work. At other times one also feels even sorrier for the young-generation Bollywood patriots who crave to see India honoured on the Oscar stage — at any cost.
“Slumdog Millionaire” failed them all.

Some Viewer Reviews

I really liked the song. It's pretty good. However, I don't think Slumdog Millionaire deserved so many Oscars. This is very good for India though and for Indian artistes. Now, perhaps Indian artists will be taken more seriously. * Jason D'Souza, III year BBM, St Joseph's College of Commerce .
The country is proud of A R Rahman's achievement. India salutes the Maestro of Madras. With this award, more people the world over will be introduced to Indian music. Rahman really deserved it.

- Pankaj Singhal, II year BCom, Dayanand Sagar Institutions.

I am really happy for A R Rahman. This will open more doors for Indian musicians. They will get many more opportunities. I feel this would not have been possible without Danny Boyle. With this recognition abroad, Indian artists will be taken more seriously. I hope Rahman gets to do more musicals abroad and even Broadway, while still remaining true to his Indian roots.

- Davina Munro, III year BA, Jyoti Nivas College

This is a moment of pride for India. The Oscars are the highest honour one can receive in the entertainment industry. Once again, Rahman has proved that he is the best. He set the path for future artists to dream. We can do it if we have faith in ourselves and our culture. `Jai Ho!' has become an anthem the world over and it's great for us Indians. It's a celebration of India.

- Karisma Nair, III year fashion design, Mount Carmel College

A Counter View

Slumdog Millionaire has won one of those extraordinary Oscar-night landslides: a film whose aura of success and feelgood word-of-mouth manages to replicate itself virally inside the heart and mind of every Academy Award voter.
It was one of the biggest British victory since Chariots of Fire and once again, the spirit of Colin Welland returned to gloat at the ceremony. The British always seem to be coming at the Oscars, but last night they really did arrive in force with a pumped-up, hyperactive, hyperreal melodrama set in south Asia with no stars other than a global TV franchise which everyone thought was past its sell-by date.
Already, the film's almost-straight-to-DVD production history has passed into legend. You could not, in Richard Littlejohn's famous phrase, make it up. It is a richly deserved victory for its likeable director Danny Boyle, whose acceptance speeches have melted hearts all over the place, and for its driving force, Film4's Tessa Ross, who is now fully entitled to luxuriate in her new status as Queen of Hollywood.
In addition, the 2009 Oscars gave a thoroughly welcome prize to Man On Wire, the extraordinary British documentary about Philippe Petit, the man who wire-walked New York's twin towers in 1974. This, I would venture to say, is the single best film to be honoured at last night's ceremony, and it can claim to have played a role in healing the wounds of 9/11.
The big surprise, of course, was Sean Penn, whose best actor award showed that Academy voters are prepared to reward old-fashioned technique: Penn's Harvey Milk was an elaborately, even brilliantly detailed impersonation of a gay man. (As with Brokeback Mountain, it may be the case that the Academy is prepared to welcome films about gay politics and gay sexuality, but not to the extent of giving them the best picture award.) Sean Penn really was Acting with a Capital A in 72-point bold.
Mickey Rourke, by contrast, was being himself: merging his established persona and reputation with a happily chosen piece of casting. Everyone, including me, thought that this was going to be the evening's sure thing. Even Kate Winslet wasn't as sure of her award as Mickey Rourke was of his. But it was not to be. Winslet herself got a well-deserved prize, though I can't help wishing that she had been awarded it for her performance in Revolutionary Road: a better performance in a far superior film.
Heath Ledger's posthumous Oscar was an event with a singular flavour: a tribute to his remarkable and deeply unnerving performance as the Joker in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, now the fourth highest grossing movie in history. Ledger had pulled off the considerable triumph of effacing the memory of Jack Nicholson in the role. It was also a melancholy tribute to a lost talent: it was like a Curtailed Lifetime Achievement Award.
Oscarology is not an exact science and quite why it has done so spectacularly well is still a bit of a mystery to me, but the time has come for those, like me, who have treated Slumdog Millionaire with a touch of friendly scepticism to wake up to an important part of what made it so compelling: its differentness, its originality. At a time when consumers of commercial cinema are offered romcoms that look like all the other romcoms, thrillers that look like all the other thrillers, classy period dramas that look like all the other classy period dramas, Slumdog Millionaire really did deliver the shock of the new. JAI HO!

References

www.bharatentrepreneurs.com www.progressive.org www.theweek.com www.guardian.co.uk www.wikipedia.com