EurasianStudies_0110..

January-March 2010 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume II., Issue 1.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Danny Boyle’s "Slumdog Millionaire” is benefiting from documentary but is also a fictive story of
poverty. Although it is talking about the poor Indians, it also mentions Oliver Twist as almost a tribute
to the British origins and there is also an additive about The Three Musketeers (at the same time this was
the last question of the contest). The movie both refers to the poverty in India, the violence of making
children blind and to force them to beg and the difficult living conditions and also it follows the known
and popular dramatical patterns of Charles Dickens and Alexander Dumas.
Making an eastern film by a western director in most cases does not work well. In many films, the
screenwriter and the director was caught in the trap of Orientalism, and represent the East as an exotic
escape point or a country of fantasy. It is the main handicap of these films to tell the story by using the
superficial image or the general perception of the East, without diffusing in the depths of the society that
they were telling. However, this is not the case with “Slumdog Millionaire”; no one can say that there is an
orientalist view in Boyle’s film. In fact, the only characters that are judged by the film are the western
people who thought that they can find spirituality by coming to India.
However, by placing the collective dances of Indians to the credits part of the film, Danny Boyle does
not forget to send a greeting to Bollywood.
Boyle’s brisk shooting of which we are familiar from Trainspotting and aesthetic transitions of time by
flashbacks, near flashbacks and present moment, represent a rich visuality in the film. From the opening
sequence to the end, the film is flowing in a compatible way in between these three time periods. There
is also the feeling of “tripping” in the film which is similar with the one in Trainspotting. But this time, it
is the India’s colorful, full of life ghettos, the chaos of its own and the sweetness of the children that
makes the minds misty.
The movie was received with a lot of interest all over the world and won numerous awards. People
loved the story of Jamal and Latika, because they want to believe in miracles. Slumdog Millionaire is
telling a kind of fairy tale of modern date. People fear the global chaos and despair from time to time,
and this film gives them what they want to see by using the "magical realism" of the cinema.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
© Copyright Mikes International 2001-2010 155