The Slumdog Millionaire phenomena? Not long ago it was all that was read in newspapers and magazines and a permanent fixture in everyone's conversation
BY SUPRIYA DAVDA | FEB 2, 2009
Though not to burst the bubble of the feel good movie or dampen its reign of glory I did feel a sense of nostaligia, having had watched Madhur Bhandarkar?s Traffic Signal and Mira Niar's Salaam Bombay!
Back in November last year, I attended a screening for the relatively unknown movie then Slumdog Millionaire presented by the BFI London Film Festival in Leicester Square. I knew then this film was going to go places undoubtedly. But not entirely in the country with which the film was based in. According to the grapevine in Mumbai the movie failed to open to full houses ? ?can you believe it?? I can only imagine the Indians are oblivious and ignorant to the squalid poverty-ridden regions, which exist in Mumbai.
Perhaps the natives felt Slumdog was a movie that reiterates the western notion of India? Though the reality is that Slumdog provides its audiences a stark reality of a country that is below the poverty line.
It has been evident since its release in January 2009 Slumdog Millionaire has been scrounded with controversies. There is nothing new in that, every big film is connected with controversies and with triumph they get more publicity and more clicks. Though the Mumbaiite feel hard done by with the representation in Slumdog. Because the city og Mumbai is a city of glitz, glamour and Bollywood.
Bollywood, a term commonly used for the Indian Film Industry has for decades intoxicate its audiences to create fantasies perhaps even misconceptions about real life. The ones who have seemed to bleat about the misrepresentations of Mumbai in Slumdog have been film makers and politicians alike. Possibly they're troubled by its stupendous global success? Or is it that both parties are now answerable to the ridiculous system they call a Indian government and a film industry?
