[arr] The Telegraph reviews SdM

[Gopal Srinivasan]

Slumdog Millionaire at the London Film Festival - review

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 31/10/2008

David Gritten
looks back at a successful London Film Festival, which has closed on the 
triumphant Slumdog Millionaire.
This
has been a good year for the London Film Festival, which has closed on
a note of triumph. Other European festivals - Cannes, Berlin and
especially Venice - struggled to present strong programmes, but London,
which weighs in last of all, had plenty of first-class films right from
its opener, Frost/Nixon.
        * Telegraph Film homepage
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This was partly lucky
timing; other festivals were hit by the aftermath of the Hollywood
writers' strike, which delayed the completion of some films. Yet the
LFF has a secret weapon in its astute artistic director Sandra Hebron,
who trawls the world seeking out suitable titles.
The
festival could hardly have ended in more rousing style. Its closing
film, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, was one of a kind liable to
send audiences happily skipping out into the cold London night. Yet on
paper this British production, partly subtitled and with no stars known
in the West, looked an unlikely prospect.
It is
set in Mumbai, where Jamal (Dev Patel, from Channel 4's Skins), an
18-year-old orphan from the slums, has reached the final question on
the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Astonishingly,
he is about to win 20 million rupees: but how can a poor uneducated boy
have known the answer to 15 tough questions? That's a loaded question
in caste-conscious India. Cheating is the obvious answer - which is why
in early scenes Jamal is interrogated brutally by the police.
Yet
in an ingenious series of flashbacks pinpointing pivotal events in
Jamal's short life, we learn how he came by the knowledge to answer
those highly specific questions.
Obviously this
could reek of stale contrivance in the wrong hands - but the screenplay
by Simon Beaufoy (adapted from Q&A, an episodic novel by Vikas
Swarup) simply soars. It's Beaufoy's most commercial and satisfying
script since The Full Monty.
Though the film's
prevailing tone is comic, director Boyle does not flinch from showing
the harsh side of Mumbai's slum life - the crushing poverty, children
sifting through garbage, heartless, casual crime, the sense of
hopelessness.
Boyle also likes to maintain a brisk
pace, and Jamal's flashbacks proceed at a gallop. We learn of his
brushes with crime, his fraught relationship with his brother, his
undying love for the slum girl Latika (Freida Pinto), and his gradual,
modest rise through the lower echelons of Indian society.
Bollywood
superstar Anil Kapoor is splendid as Prem, the TV show's quiz master, a
man who also knows something about re-inventing himself - but then
every performance feels finely judged.
Slumdog
Millionaire is that rarity, a populist, mainstream entertainment that
finds a way to deliver cheerful uplift to its audience without ever
insulting the intelligence. A terrific festival climax.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/10/31/bfslumdog131.xml